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AP US History
The Death Of Hilarity
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I'm currently in AP US history class, second quarter. The exam is May 11th, and I feel like I know nothing about history. Due to me being a bad student, I have basically already failed the class unless the teacher gives me a chance to make up 2 assignments, which he has no reason to do. I guess I am just wondering what I should do about the course, and if I stick it out and take the AP exam, what are some good resources to study for it so that I don't go in there ignorant.
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You are probably super fucked. The AP US history exam is hard as hell.
I'd read your textbook. like three times.
Unfortunately, the history textbook I have is the Enduring Vision, which everybody in the class including the teacher calls the Unendurable Vision because it's a terrible textbook. The teacher has complained about it multiple times, but it's not his choice which textbook to use and he's been turned down every time he tried to switch it.
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This was 3 years ago, but I had this book... I forget the name, I can ask my brother later and get back to you, as he's using it now, that was basically an AP US History book... short and thick as hell, with a big American flag theme all over the cover. I studied by basically sitting and reading the book from front to... well, I got up to JFK... but I just sat and did it. It helped, a lot. Good book, not necessarily the best strategy... but I recommend one of those types of books.
Know how to do DBQs properly, because seriously, my year it was on the fucking French and Indian war which no one remembered all that much about, but because it was the DBQ you could derive all the information you needed from the documents, and it was just about know how to properly write an essay in DBQ style.
Flash cards could help, not my style, but they've helped friends.
Unless you study a testprep book every day until May 11, you're not going to get credit for the test anyways, so get your 40 bucks instead.
I'm not paying for the exam, the school is, so I might as well take it if I think I can pass it.
A good AP History prep book will have a detailed overview of the periods of history the test covers. It can be far better than just using your school's history book. The sample questions and stuff is useful as well of course, but having a reference that doesn't go into parts that the AP test doesn't care about helps weed stuff out (though the AP US History test still covers a lot).
This is still a lot of material to cover though and if you aren't able to memorize large amounts of information, you obviously have more work cut out for you.
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My main problem is I never needed to study once to get a B from elementary school all the way til 9th grade, and somewhat into 10th grade. Now I either have tons of work that I don't do (Algebra 2 honors and English 3 honors) because I can pass related tests easily without doing them, and get a bad grade in the class for not doing them, or have a hard class (APUSH, Chem Honors, somewhat Physics Honors) and don't have any real work ethic (the thing I find somewhat strange but I guess it makes sense is that at my actual job, every manager there has told me that I'm the hardest worker there and they wish more people like me would apply, which is generally why I never tell them how I do in school). My teacher personally recommended http://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/database/hyper_titles.cfm as an alternate textbook, so I plan on reading as much of it as possible before the test. Basically, I have a terrible memory, and a terrible work ethic if I'm not getting paid to do something, and need to know how to fix this. I am already set to graduate high school, even if I fail this class, but I'll be graduating with a bunch of honors classes and a 2.0 GPA (on a 5 point scale) due to terrible quarter grades being pulled up to passing by good exam grades.
Last semester I had Prob and Stat, Physics Honors, and Pre-AP US History. I got a 75 combined grade in Prob/Stat for both quarters, 69 for Physics Honors, and 71 for Pre-AP USH. My final exam grades: 91, 88, and 88 respectively. What can I do to fix this terrible problem, before I let myself ruin my future more than I already have.
But then, I did well in the class. Take a look at the assignment questions you've gotten wrong and make sure you don't get them wrong again.
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This sounds eerily familiar. I never had to study a day in my life, right up until second year BA. Even at that point, I got special dispensations from the dean to simply challenge the exams. I blew through those with no problems and settled into an aimless job surrounded by munchie inducing fog.
Years later I have nothing but utter contempt for taking stuff home with me to work on. I don't like major projects I'm not personally interested in, and have the attention span of an alzhiemer'd goldfish. The ability to slog through years of mediocrity never really settled in, and it has hampered my work at the higher levels of my profession considerably. I truly wish I had met someone who completely and utterly outclassed my own intellectual level, hopefully delivering enough of a cerebral asskicking to wake up me up to what i could acheive instead of settling into a relatively above average position requiring only the most minimal of efforts.
My advice to the younger me would have been to learn how to put in the time, because brilliance without direction and effort results in much masturbatory back-patting without anything of real note getting done.
...seriously.
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Edit: Listen to Sarcastro. I feel like I'm headed down the same path myself.
My god you just told me what I've been terrified my future will be for the last two years. Thanks for the good advice to setrajonas, jawa, and lordswing. I'll try and do as much as I can muster up the effort to to help myself, and hopefully avoid doing something I'll regret later.
I just doodled and wrote "so much for 83 dollars"
Although to be fair, I knew everything and was just completely apathetic.
I used this more than the main text book and, yes, I did pass the test.
Your main problem will probably be the essay stuff. That requires alot of practice and feedback from teachers and isn't really something you can study up for at the last minute.
It's engaging, funny, and covers a wide range of topics in accessible language. It also goes very well with any histroy course, as it tends to teach you things that fill in the gaps between what you've learned about in class. I read only this, didn't even take the class itself, and I got a 4 on the AP exam. It's a damn fine learning tool. In fact, I would reccomend any of his books for supplemental material on pretty much any high school topic.
See how many books I've read so far in 2010
This is shitty advice. For Christ's sake man, think of your parents. Spend 80 bucks for a chance to save your parents (or yourself, if you're the one paying for college) hundreds and hundreds of dollars? Um, duh. If you think you have any chance whatsoever of passing this exam, you should take it because the bottom line is it's just one less thing to worry about once you get to college. I took quite a few AP classes in high school, and let me tell you it's pretty nice to be able to get to college and go right into the classes you actually want to take.
Okay, I took APUSH and got a 4 on the exam, it's not that bad, and I skimmed the reading and coupled it with this website
http://www.course-notes.org/US_History/
It essentially goes through every chapter of the book and breaks it down and annotates it for you, don't wikipedia or any of that other shit, it's not going to help. This is specifically for kids who are looking for help studying for the AP test.
Also, if you're going to take practice exams PRACTICE THE DOCUMENT BASED QUESTIONS (DBQ's) if I recall they're what, 1/3 or 1/2 of your grade? I know there's another Essay and the MC section, don't stress too much just make sure you get a good overall foundation on each era, you can usually easily eliminate several MC choices. DBQ's require NO OUTSIDE KNOWLEDGE, this is your best oppurtunity to shine and get a solid grade on the exam.
Maybe if you do a couple of sample DBQ's timed etc, and turned them into your teacher, He might even give you a shot at some *extra credit* show him that you're working hard preparing for this exam, and that you know you effed up.
This website really help a lot and has some solid notes, when I actually take notes out of my history books in college, they're pretty much like this.
But to prepare I would do sample DBQ's definatly, those are the most important.
Sneaky..
course-notes.org is great with the outlines and such. Honestly dude though, the guy below you was right, I read my text book about 3 times through.
For the DBQ: bring in outside information if you want to get more than 5/9 on that section.
Take alot of practice tests and start reading your book. Thats what I did and I got a five, but I did study the whole year.
Um, I really do not think this is typical at all. Most people I know think APUSH is one of the harder AP tests. I took it and did rather poorly, and I can confidently tell you that it is not likely something that you can cram for in a short amount of time while still expecting to get higher than a 2 or a 3. There is a huge amount of material, the multiple choice questions are difficult, and the DBQs are hard to score well on if you don't really know what you're talking about.
That said, I was having kind of a rough year when I took APUSH (though I did get a B in the class itself), and I was also a sophomore; as a senior now, I would probably be better equipped in terms of work ethic and study know-how. You would do well to pick up some test prep books (Princeton Review tends to be a favorite, and you should also know that there is an SAT II Subject Test for US History that covers pretty much the same stuff in abbreviated form, so you could get some test prep books for that, too). Course-Notes.org was actually created by my friend's brother, and I can tell you that it's quite helpful, but back when I was taking the class, pretty much all of the material on the website was from The American Pageant by Thomas Bailey, which is widely considered the most comprehensive APUSH history textbook. That said, it is atrociously dense, not particularly well-written, and it's simply too late for you to be using it at this point. Because of that, I'm not so sure Course-Notes is going to be your best resource, but it might be worth checking out.
Really, though, buy some prep books, do a couple of full practice tests per week until the AP exam (which really is right around the corner), and use the other resources that people have recommended in this thread. I'm sure you can still pull it off at this point, and hey, you might have a different experience altogether from the people I know (including myself), but it's not going to be easy. Good luck.
That right?
I didn't do jack in either class, and I got a 1 on my APUSH, but a 3 on my Euro.
How?
Two days before the Euro test, I read the Cliff's AP Euro Guide from cover to cover. All I needed. Seriously made the AP test I was dreading the most super easy.
It's well worth the $20.
But coming from another point of view: AP Exams may not matter for any reason once you get into college.
I didn't pass many of my AP exams since my scores weren't good enough for my college (mostly wanted 5s and some 4s). But I've never been unable to take a class I've wanted to take because I had to fulfill some requirement. Nor have I "repeated" any classes that I took in highschool, except for Physics, but I'm cool with that. Basically, I'm saying if I could go back I wouldn't really stress out over the exams as much as I did. The real reason to take these classes is just to inflate your GPA and look better on transcripts.
Although basically it just means that, a year into it now, my change of majors won't put me behind too far. :P
Isn't the AP Exam in mid May?
AP credits are only really useful for people who don't know what the hell they want to major in or could see themselves switching majors.