I’m currently in United States History II-Honors
What additional work should I study to be prepared for the APUSH exam?
Ex:
A prep book
An advanced history book (The American Pageant)
Writing DBQs
The current materials I have are the REA Crash Course and the Youtube Crash Course videos
As for English, I’m currently in English 11 Honors
I do have a knack for writing and reading
What additional work to prepare?
Ex:
A prep book
Writing LEQs
I haven’t taken the AP Lit test (yet) but for APUSH I would really reccommend the Princeton review book! It’s really good with practice tests and briefer summaries on chapters, so before I took the test I just made flashcards on the majority of the book and took a practice test and I felt well prepared
Also, I would recommend watching crash course before the exam as well! The videos seem to be based in a lot of the curriculum in APUSH so they’re super helpful as well
I didn’t know I couldn’t edit my first post. Apologies. But for AP Eng Lang I have the CliffsAP, Petersons, and Barron’s review along with Albert and the REA crash course
@gk Thanks for the tips, I will definitely take those into consideration c:
I’m not sure I think it’s a good idea to take the ap lit exam. A lot of the things you learn in the class are from routinely doing things over and over, not just being a good writer. You have to be a very attentive reader, which is harder than you think. A lot of the content is old and hard to understand, and you won’t have read the classic literature that students who take the class do (you’ll have to write an essay on the book). Look very carefully into what you have to do for the exam before you decide to take it. Multiple choice is tough for most people and you also have to do a poem analysis. I don’t think a book will be able to completely prepare you for this exam, I think it’s more of a reinforcement.
All we’ve been doing is reading and analyzing literature and have recently analyzed three poems
The content is old, obviously because it’s English, so we read the classics
Your english curriculum may be different than mine, because mine is pretty much all analysis of literature
Literary concepts, terms, readings, essays…all analysis
Sorry I didn’t mention that before
I’m a little confused. You’re a junior right? Why would you take the AP English Lit exam instead of the AP English Lang test. Also I’ve taken these test before and for APUSH you need to know the contant very well and be practiced in writing it quickly. I’m not really a fan of taking AP Exams for classes you havent been enrrolled in, because it takes a lot of time to prepare.
AdComms don’t particularly enjoy it when kids try to subvert their curriculum and self-study for APs. I can’t remember when, but there was a panel with the Harvard AdComms and they unanimously agreed that they are not impressed by how much you can cram to take a test, no matter how many tests you cram for. If your school offers APEL&C, take it. Don’t cheat yourself.
I’m a senior this year and I took both of these classes and their tests last year. For APUSH, you need to be able to contextualize. The AP tests for social studies classes are very much application, it’s not like learning dates and spitting them out on paper (if you’ve already taken AP Euro or AP World you should understand how difficult these tests are if you can’t put events with time periods and ideas/trends of those time periods, plus different political viewpoints and their impacts). Knowing the Presidents is important, not because you’ll be asked specific questions on them, but because knowing their party and their time period helps you to contextualize. Regardless, you do need to know the history, these aren’t tests you can go into with minimal knowledge. If you really want to take it, there are a few time period review places online, I watched a series of videos covering each time period (10-20 mins each) the day before the test and it was very helpful, but I can’t remember the site.
For AP Lang, I don’t know that what you’re doing is the best prep. AP Lang is focused mostly on writing and rhetorical analysis (not literary analysis, in AP Lang you read mostly nonfiction whereas in AP Lit you read literature). If you are a very good writer (you get 7+ scores on timed writes) you’ll be able to do both, but it usually comes with a lot of practice, and in a non-AP class I’m not sure that you’d get that. Being able to write well in a short period of time is very important, for both tests actually. For AP Lang you must be able to write WELL very quickly, and in APUSH you must be able to support your historical analysis well very quickly (you don’t need to be as good of a writer for this one, but it doesn’t hurt). I didn’t use a guidebook, do those have example essays and test questions? Those would be the best way to prep for these tests.