AP Exams: How To

Are you taking an AP Exam, or multiple AP Exams, this May?

Don’t let stress get the best of you before you sit down to take your test. Panicking can greatly impact your performance, and I have some tips and reminders that you can use to prevent test-day-anxiety from seriously affecting you, followed by some general study tips to use in the upcoming weeks—because if one thing helps to decrease stress, it’s being well prepared.

1. First, keep some things in mind:

You’ve been preparing for this exam… for months! Unless you’re self-studying, you have had an awesome teacher instructing you on the content that will be covered on the exam for so long now. Even if you don’t feel perfect on everything, it’s important to remember that you literally have been in a classroom, doing the work, putting in the time, for a whole semester, or more! Don’t think, I’ve only studied x amount of hours for this exam—that’s not enough! Instead remember that every single block—83 minutes—that you’ve been in the classroom, you’ve been learning, and, believe it or not, you’ve been preparing for that AP Exam. All you need to do is brush up on some information. Don’t forget—you’re so very ready!

2. Plan out the morning of

You want the morning of the exam to run as smoothly as possible. Every planner knows: your morning routine starts the night before. Every single exam prep book and online article says to get a good night’s sleep, and I wouldn’t take this advice lightly. Budget at least—at least—8 hours of sleep the night before; the more, the better. Know your sleep schedule, and know that going to bed at 9 p.m. out of the blue if you normally go to bed at 11 won’t work. Instead, gradually work towards that earlier time—the week of, inch towards an earlier bed time to ensure your ability to get the right amount of hours the night of. Now, plan your morning! Don’t wake up earlier than normal—if you truly wish to, do the same process as you did with sleep—gradually work towards it. Your body doesn’t like sudden changes. Wake up near your normal time, have a hardy breakfast (brainfood; not something that will make you crash like ice-cream. It’s not time for celebration food yet), and get excited. You want to plan this all out so that the morning of can go seamlessly. Conserve all your energy for the exam; don’t let decision fatigue and random stressors knock you out before you even get to school!

3. Plan something fun to do afterwards

This is self-explanatory. It gives you something to look forward to after the exam. Celebrate! You’re done (but don’t dwell on it at all during the exam).

4. Plan ahead and let your teachers know.

Seriously, talk to your teachers. If you’re taking multiple exams, you will miss work, so ask if you can meet with them, and see if they can give you the work. Since you’ll be missing blocks, it’s better to be proactive and get the work done before the exams than to let future you deal with the workload—get it done early, so that you have time to breathe once the exams are over.

5. Pack your bag the night before

Pencils, pens, calculators… anything you need. Don’t scramble the morning of, as we’ve discussed. Anything you need, have it ready. For example, I put what I need to make my morning tea and coffee out the night before so I don’t need to think at all, and I’d advise you to do the same with your morning-routine.

Okay, now for some real exam-study tips that can help you the day of and the weeks before.

6. Your short-term memory can hold 7 +/- 2 items.

What does this mean? Well, lots of psychological research has determined that you can hold around seven items, seven things (like vocab words, dates, names, etc.) in your short-term memory for a certain amount of time. Freaking out because you don’t know that the Vietnam War took place from 1955—1975? Look at it, do your best to memorize it, and test your recall a dozen times before you get to school. Before you go to the exam room, refresh your memory. When you get the test, WRITE IT DOWN! The only downside to this tip is that the information you’ve just crammed only stays for a certain amount of time, so if you don’t regurgitate it quick enough, you might lose it. However, if you memorize it the morning of, refresh your memory right before, and write it down when you begin your test, you might be seriously helping yourself out. While it won’t commit to long term memory, you’re likely to benefit from this trick if you’re running really short on time, and you can do it with 7 things! I find this the easiest to do with vocabulary words for language, as they are far less complicated than concepts (I wouldn’t try to short-term serious abstract concepts!!! You’re getting into danger territory there), however you can also utilize this with dates and other easy facts. So, don’t freak out if you forget the limit definition of the derivative the morning of. Your short-term memory’s got you covered!

7. Auditory learning

Not everyone is a visual learner. I know. It’s crazy. But it’s true. While most people claim that they are visual learners, it’s simply not the case. And even if you are a visual learner, you shouldn’t solely rely on that to memorize content—you should immerse yourself in the content. What I do, something that has made a world of difference in my academic progress, is orally repeating things like vocab words for language. We’ll stick with the ‘memorizing the Vietnam War took place from 1955—1975’ example.

If I really wanted to memorize this (and not just short-term-memorize it), I would literally say (I know it’s a little awkward, but bear with me): “Vietnam War 1955 to 1975”. I would say this, like, 5 times. It won’t stick immediately, but if you do this again before you go to bed, and again the next day, and the next day, for a few days/weeks, you will find that after a series of continued practice, you will be able to recall it. Try it—this saved me through unbearably long Spanish vocab lists.

8. Do an info-dump

I find this the most useful 1) before beginning to study in order to highlight the areas of need and 2) a few days/weeks into studying to see what you’re able to recall and what needs more effort to memorize. If you want to assess your knowledge, take a blank piece of paper and write. Give yourself however much time is necessary, and write down everything you remember! You can make it into a concept map, a web, or whatever you want—just write down what you remember until your brain is thoroughly quenched of all available knowledge on the subject. Once you finish, take a look. See which units you barely wrote about and which ones you summarized perfectly. This will give you a great base for where your study energy needs to go.

I hope these 8 little tips helped! As impossible as it sounds, you really can make AP Exams fun if you just reframe your perspective a little. We’re doing this to showcase all that we’ve learned—AP Exams are simply a year-long brain dump that happens to be graded!