Though not mandated in the state of California, Advanced Placement (AP) courses are designed to allow students to earn college credits in high schools and build strong skills and confidence through College Board’s nationally-recognized rigorous curriculums. At UPA, students must pass two AP courses in order to meet the requirements to graduate. 

Students generally take an AP class throughout the academic year and take the exam in May. The possible scores a student can receive range from one to five, with a three considered passing level, and a four or five considered as exceptional. As reported by CollegeBoard, more than 50% of exam-takers pass and 19.6% of those students receive fives. 

AP tests are known for their difficulty and students struggle to prepare and keep up with the course work. However, the skills that they teach can help throughout high school, college and beyond that. Senior Lauren Nghiem feels that she’s learned many study skills for the AP exam that have helped her performance.

“When studying, I usually go over my notes and try to practice problems related to the question, but every student is different,” Nghiem said. “What works for me might not work for others.”

Nghiem believes that her study strategies have led her to achieve the results that she wants. However, she recognizes that each person must discover the study strategies that work best for them, rather than relying on someone else’s methods to achieve success.

Junior Pranav Nigam also believes that the heavy courseload of AP classes require a unique approach to studying.

“It’s much easier to learn the concepts than just learn very specific tricks or techniques that you have to memorize,” Nigam said. “Just understanding the more broad pattern or why things are [is] certainly easier for me than memorizing specific things.”

Nigam believes that memorizing unconnected pieces of information for tests is inconvenient and time-consuming, as when a student applies concepts to a problem, they are more likely to remember as they build off of what they know, and this reinforces their memory and skill in general. 

UPA alumni and history teacher Pablo Lopez took multiple AP courses in his high school years and noticed that the skills he learned were able to help him later in his education.

“I built the study skills of how to skim, taking notes and figuring out what the main ideas are,” Lopez said. “So I think it was more the study skills that really, really helped me in college. ”

Lopez believes that learning is the combination of how people study and their ability to remember things. He thinks that AP classes teach students how to actively learn material and learn skills that will help them in college, as they helped fuel his later academic success.

Paraeducator Cameron Grubb also shares Lopez’s view of test-taking and how it’s an effective way to learn study skills.

“I feel that taking tests and studying for tests mainly depends on the test,” Grubb said. “For AP Lang, it’s mainly applying concepts and just learning how to write essays in general. Also, most tests were content-based with in-depth notes, textbook readings.” 

Grubb believes that throughout his experiences with studying for AP tests, he learned that the most effective way to retain information and do well on his tests was to connect facts with other important information for long-term understanding.

In addition to these study strategies, some other effective study methods according to the University of Health Sciences of Augustine’s include SQ3R, Retrieval Practice, Spaced Practice and more. The most effective method is known to be the SQ3R, which stands for skimming the notes, formulating questions based on them, reading the notes, reciting or teaching someone the content and reviewing the notes. This is followed by retrieval practice, which means attempting to recall studied information at a later time without references. This method is successful as it helps to randomly review the information to recreate the feeling of being quizzed, which strengthens one’s memory of the topic. However, in order for success through these strategies, limiting procrastination and ensuring constant habit development and reinforcement is important as well.

AP classes can be valuable, providing extra GPA points, credits that let students skip classes in college and strong study habits that can be customized to the person and utilized beyond exams to help with future success.