Heeds on AP Exams
By: Connie Tan
It’s the time for the hardest exam in the high school career: AP exams. These exams usually take place on the second and third week of May. AP exams become the most stressful when you are worried that you won’t finish a test in a certain amount of time or get stuck on a question. The solution to that, of course, is to study. Or if you are confident in a subject, say a particular language, then it’s no problem. However, subjects like English, math, and science are the biggest obstacle you will face if you decide to take those. Since the registration date passed, this article is for those who want to take AP classes/exams next school year or in the future.
Before the AP exams are the AP classes, when choosing AP classes, you have to be sure you can pass the course. There are many times that people overburden themselves with AP classes because they want to look good for college. But because of the extreme amount of classes they have to deal with, they lose their balance between school work and life. People get sleep deprived taking AP classes but when the stress builds up white hair starts to grow. AP language classes are the easiest to pass if you are a native of them. If you pay attention to class enough, you will ace the AP exam. It’s to pinpoint which AP class is the hardest since it all depends on the student’s knowledge and skills in them. Even so, these are the most agreed hardest AP classes. AP US history requires you to know how very particular events in history such as dates, movements, people, and laws because the exam expects the student to know exact events. More details, better grade. Next is, AP biology. Another heavy-memorization based course. Biology is one of the science that is conceptually difficult. If you have a hard time with concepts, you may want to reconsider AP biology. In addition to that, you have to know things like from very specific chemical processes to evolution. Third, AP English Literature, the harder version of AP English Language. This class is reading-heavy and includes books that are much more challenging than if you took the AP English Language. Then, you have to write an essay about the books you’ve read in your class during the exam. SparkNotes will not do you good. You need to read the books no matter what to get a good score.
Fourth, AP chemistry. Speaking from personal experience AP chemistry is currently the toughest course I am taking right now. Chemistry is conceptually hard itself. You have to integrate many things you’ve learned previously to solve problems or rationalize something. When it comes to the exam for it, you would need to memorize a lot of materials such as all the functional groups, chemical formulas, conversion factors, etc. The fifth is AP Physics C. C stands for calculus, and because this course combines calculus, it is much harder than AP Physics 1. This class goes much more in depth while AP Physics 1 is less in depth. It is best for the student to finish taking calculus or is taking calculus at the same time to join this class — lastly, AP Calculus BC. AP Calculus BC covers materials extremely fast. Typically, it would include materials of what AP Calculus AB learns in one semester. If you struggle to keep up in the beginning, it would be hard to catch up later on. In that case, ask your teachers for help.