Starting Monday, May 4, many students will begin taking the AP Test for all of the Advanced Placement courses they are enrolled in. The test is designed to be difficult and requires students to work hard throughout the year to succeed. With the exam just days away, what are the best ways to prepare for it?

The AP Test is comprehensive, so it is important that students are focused for the entire year, instead of immediately before the exam. “It’s a year-long prep,” math teacher Theresa Grospitch said. “It’s not just in the last two weeks before the exam prep.”

Fortunately, throughout the year, teachers provide a variety of resources to help their students best prepare for the test. In addition to teaching the content, they also provide practice quizzes, study resources, and sessions outside of school to get extra practice.

While teachers do provide many resources, it is still the job of the student to use these resources to their advantage. An important part of studying properly is to focus on the content that is challenging and not as practiced.

“I feel like a lot of times we focus on the content or the skills that we feel confident on because it makes us feel good, but the units that you feel least confident on are the ones that you should really try and practice and apply the content with,” Grospitch said.

Outside of what the teacher provides, many good resources can be found on YouTube, Google, or generated with AI. In general, though, because people learn in so many different ways, there is no “correct” way to study, as a method that works well for one student may be ineffective for another.

“I like to say, just start,” Allen said. “My strategy is that anything you do is better than nothing.”

For many classes, it is more than just knowing the content that is important, but also refining the skills necessary for test-taking.

“I try to focus on skills rather than content,” said AP World History teacher Paige Allen. “I tell students that you have the ability to easily learn content on your own, and you can learn it in a way that you want.”

There are many skills that can be practiced to improve test-taking performance, such as time management. It is important to divide time during a big exam, and to skip questions that are difficult to answer in order to not waste time on them.

“They’re going to have plenty of time. Just take their time and work through it,” Grospitch said.

Another skill that seems simple but is important is confidence. Simply being calm and confident during a test can improve clarity. “Because if you feel stressed, then you get frazzled, and then if you go into kind of anxious mode, then you’re going to read questions wrong. You’re not going to write as clearly or confidently as you can,” Allen explained.

Having a good test-taking strategy and mindset can help not just for AP tests, but for any high-stakes test in high school and beyond. Scoring a three, four, or five on an AP test provides college credit. The AP test also builds perseverance, discipline, and study skills that will be important in the future.

While the AP test is not designed to be easy, students have many ways to be successful in class, at home, and during the test in order to feel ready.

“It doesn’t have to be starting six weeks out if that isn’t possible for you or realistic for you,” Allen said. “It’s any amount of time or anything that you can do to try and study and prepare to help you be successful.”