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## Intro....Why Most Students Study the Wrong Way [00:00] Coach Tony here with Egolock College Prep. Today we have a really awesome training for you. We actually have one of my awesome friends, uh, Joey over at Think Prep. He's literally one of the best folks to go to when it comes to AP exam prep and even test prep as a whole, too. Uh, but today we have a special training for you guys on AP exams. You know, AP exams are literally right around the corner. So, who better to help prep us than one of the top in the industry when it comes to AP prep here. So, I'm going to go ahead let Joey introduce himself and go straight in. Uh, we are going live right now. So, if you guys are joining us live on Zoom, go ahead and say hi in the chat. Let us know what grade you're in. Feel free to start dropping the questions in the chat. I'll be I'll play chat support and kind of gather the questions. Uh, I I believe Joey has a section at the very end for Q&A as well. But without further, I'll let the master take it off from here. Awesome. Thank you so much for having me. So, yes, we are kind of in the throws of AP season. Uh I'm based here out of um Orange County, California near where Coach Tony is. So, a little bit of background since uh you're all new to me. My name is Joey. I go by the perfect score tutor. I've gotten perfect scores on the SAT and the ACT. And so, that's kind of what launched me into this career. So, in addition to doing test prep, I've been working with uh students on a variety of academic subjects as well. I love testing. It's just kind of my my lifestyle, my bread and butter. So, I can answer any questions about testing for you. Um, I focus specifically on calculus, physics, lang stats, AP US history. I also work with a handful of AP experts who have grading experience in biology, human geography, Spanish. So, I've kind of gathered some of their feedback to put into this presentation as well. Um, so I, like I said, I've worked with quite a few students, including students who've had really poor teachers and I've really helped them coach themselves to success using some of these methods that I'm going to share with you. Before I jump into some of these methods, though, I want to give you a pop quiz. What do you think? Which of these study methods is going to be the most effective when it comes to prepping for AP exams? Drop your answer in the chat. Is it rereading textbooks? Is it re-watching videos? Is it reviewing your notes or is it highlighting your notes? Let's see what people are saying. Um, well, Coach Tony says C. Anybody else drop your answer in the chat? Reviewing notes. C. Everybody is saying C. Well, now Coach Tony has changed his mind. ## What’s the 80/20 Rule and Why It Works [02:30] He's saying re-watching videos. So, uh, I tricked you all. It's actually none of the above. Um, so I'm going to go into some more popular and more effective methods for you out there. Okay. So, um just for uh for those of you who aren't aware, I did want to put in some of the current pass rates right now. And I think this is based on the fact that people think that some of those methods are the best way of studying. But as you can see that even though there are millions of students taking these tests and getting A's, there's a quite a huge number of students getting A's. You see that the number of students getting the fives is much lower than you would think. So, that's just some um food for thought over there. But the thing I'm gonna first start off talking about is this 8020 method. This is called the proto principle. And it's just basically the idea that 80% of your efforts leads to 20% of your results and vice versa. That means doing a lot of the basic stuff like rereading your notes, re-watching videos. That's that 80% of stuff that really only does 20% of your knowledge. Instead, what we want to focus on is doing the 20% of work that can lead to the 80% of the results. So let me dive into some of these steps right here right now. So the first one is familiarizing yourself with high yield topics. Even though there are let's say 50 questions on an exam, not all 50 questions are going to teach this or test you on the same 50 concepts, right? So some of them are going to focus more heavily on one area and some of them are only going to have like one random question that is like that really really hard question. So you shouldn't treat all your questions equally. So, one of the things that you can do um right now is figure out the course that you're taking, type it into Google, and type in something called the CED. So, this is basically a document that College Board releases for every single subject, the course and exam description. And within the CED, it breaks apart the units as to how frequently show up on the exam. So, here's the physics one, right? So, physics one is a notoriously difficult exam. 10% of students get a five on it, right? And so you can see over here, oh, oscillations. I hate oscillations. Well, that's okay. Oscillations are only 5 to 8% of your time. So why are you going to spend the majority of your time focusing on something that only shows up less than 8% of the time, right? So make sure that you search the most recent ones because College Board is constantly changing these exams. Here's another example. Here's AP Chemistry, right? So you can see the most heavy-hitting topic is unit 3. So, you want to spend the majority of your time focusing on unit three, especially if that's a weak area because you know that's going to show up quite often. Another thing that the CED does does for you as well is it kind of breaks down how the multiple choice and how the the free response are going to be structured. So, for example, in this chemistry test, right, this mathematical routine, that's going to show basically half of the test. So, if you don't know what a mathematical routine is or how to solve those types of questions, that's where you want to start putting your energy first. Um, okay. Step number two, you want to familiarize yourself with rubrics and expectations. So, one of the things my office has been doing since March is we're offering AP practice exams. And one of the first questions we ask students is, "Are you familiar with how the test is run? Uh, do you have any questions about the test?" And you would be surprised with the number of students ## Using the CED to Spot High-Yield Topics [05:45] who were even showing up like last weekend. They're like, "Um, I'm actually not familiar. Can you explain how this test is going to go?" And that just like blows my mind. Like, you've been in class for how many months now? seven months, eight months and you still don't know what this test is. In fact, some students don't even know that this is the first year that the exam is going to be fully digital. So, no multiple choice, no bubbling in scantrons, right? Everything is going to be done on the computer, at least for the multiple choice. And then for the humanities exam, students have to type their essays. So, I had a student last week, even though I told him, "Type your essay, type your essay." He still did a handwritten essay. It's fine. I graded it. But it's just even familiarizing yourself with this test is going to be very important. So, here's a rubric that I uh picked from the AP History one, right? Understanding, oh, wait. In order to get one point on the US history, I need a thesis. I'm still grading essays right now for AP US history where students are still aren't giving me the thesis exam. Understanding that you have to start off your essay with a contextualization point, right? Here's another example that came from the exam this past weekend. This is a student who just submitted their AP calculus work and this answer was actually correct. But this student did not follow any of the AP calculus grading conventions. Um, AP calculus requires students to write in full and complete sentences and not use abbreviations when at all possible for the risk of misunderstanding. Wow. A math exam that requires proper grammar. Who would have thought, right? That's actually part of uh math is to be able to confidently and clearly explain yourself using proper English. So even though this example of a student answer showed that he clearly understood, he got no credit because he didn't follow the rubric. Step number three is now we're going to dive into the effective study methods, right? Because right now if you go and ask your student how to study, I bet they wouldn't be able to give you an answer. They'd be like, "Uh, look at my notes. uh make a flash card. Surprisingly, some some students don't even know what a flash card is. So, that's what we're going to start with first. So, how do you even make a flash card, right? So, you you take an index card and you put stuff on both sides of it, right? And why? It trains you to remember something because surprisingly enough, research has shown that looking at a topic one time is not going to be enough for you ## How to Study....Flashcards, Blurting, Rewriting Mistakes [08:00] to store it in your long-term memory, right? You have to see it five, six, seven times. So, this is the idea of space repetition, right? the first time you see it, um it'll you'll forget it really quickly, but then if you see it again, it'll take a little bit longer to forget, a little bit longer, a little bit longer. And so with students who are addicted to technology these days, there's ways you can gamify it. There's apps for it. There's like Ani, there's like Quizlet, and you know, you can play shooting games to help you remember certain facts. Um, but I think what students do when they make flash cards is sometimes they really don't think about ways that they can target their weakness. they just kind of like write whatever on one side and then write whatever on the other side. But you really have to think, oh, I'm bad at um the equation part of it, so I'm going to test myself on that. Or I don't understand this word. This word I always forget, so that's what I'm going to target. One thing you can do when you're setting up your flash cards is using something called like the lightener system, which you basically have little boxes. You can use shoe boxes, Tupperware, whatever. And basically, you're just going to put all your flash cards into box one on day one. And then you're just going to go through everything in that box. Now, if you remember it, then you're going to move that box, that card into box two, right? And so then box two you review only every couple of days to help you remember. And then box three is every four days. And if you want to do more and more boxes, you can do it like that. Um, right now we're pretty close to the test, so I don't know how many boxes that you want. But basically, it allows you to figure out, oh, hey, I'm really good at this stuff in box three or box four, but is that box one that I'm going to need to um recall more and more often. Another thing you want to do with flashcards, like I said before, is target your weaknesses. For example, in history, what a lot of students do for history is they just like put the name or put the date. But US history, AP government, uh European history, they do not test names and dates necessarily. I mean there are a few but more importantly they test this idea of continuity versus change. So if you understand what the rubric is looking to that's you can cater your flash cards towards that. So for example in this flash card here I put world war and I put continuity and on the opposite side then I put how was world war I an example of continuity. What students are struggling with at least in the history classes is they understand the concept in a bubble but then they can't connect that concept to other things that happen and that's one of the things that history classes in AP really really hit home. Same thing uh with this idea AP US history test the idea of change over time. So how was World War I a change an example of change over time and then you put the answer on the opposite side. So that way when you see this sort of stuff and you keep reviewing it, it almost becomes like second nature if you get an essay question on it, right? You just literally blurt out that sentence. Here's an example for math, right? Because um surprisingly, even the people who are best at arithmetic are really bad when it comes to explaining in the proper way. So here's an example of something called the mean value theorem. And students know what the mean value theorem is, but they don't know how to explain it. So, I encourage students just make a flash card out of it because if you can just do this exact thing, you'll get the point. But if you miss parts of it, then you don't get the point, right? It's really about just like collecting points like Mario collects stars. Moving on to another technique is called blurting. So, blurting is the idea of just you take your notes from class, right? You're really good at taking notes in class hopefully. And then, are you really good at recalling it? You won't know until you test yourself. So then you get a completely blank sheet of paper and then from there you write down whatever you can recall from memory. Don't use Siri, don't use Alexa. Use your own brain because by challenging your own brain to recall then you're forcing it to work. If you don't if you ask Alexa you're just being lazy and you're letting your brain kind of deteriorate. So you write down whatever you can uh recall from yourself and then you compare to your notes and figure out those things that are missing because then that can help you prioritize. You don't need to spend forever reviewing dots one through three because you were able to remember them. You need to spend the majority of your time remembering dots four and five. Right? So, this blurting thing is a really um effective technique to help you highlight, oh, what is it that you're having trouble remembering? Okay. Technique number three. This one sounds really, really simple, but it's also very, very useful. Is rewriting old mistakes. A lot of students think that, oh, okay, I see my mistake. Okay, I got it. I'm never going to make that mistake again. And then when I see them next week and ask them, of course, they've forgotten it. ## The Power of Teaching Others (Protégé Effect) [12:30] Students really need to train themselves to review old mistakes. So, um, get a hold of your old practice tests and exams. I know more and more teachers are keeping these exams kind of like shut up because they don't want students to like steal them, but they'll still share them with students during office hours, right? And take advantage of that. Then make yourself an extra separate cheat sheet and write down not only the correct answer but focus on why you missed the question. Okay, a lot of students miss questions for different reasons. Some miss because they uh didn't read properly. Others miss because they didn't know a specific keyword. Others miss because they were rushing. So depending on the reason you miss is also going to highlight to you if it's an important question or a notimp important question. If you just miss because you went too quickly, then all you got to do is slow down. You don't have to review that content. But if you miss because you fundamentally didn't understand a keyword, then you're going to need to make a flash card out of the keyword or something like that. Right? Then you also need to write down how you will not make that same mistake again. When I ask students this at the very beginning, a lot of times they're just like, I don't know. I don't know. If you're going to find yourself saying, I don't know, that means you're not in a place where you're ready to move yourself forward. really really challenge yourself is think how will I not do it? Do I need to write down the equation at the top of the page? Do I need to highlight or circle key answers? Do I need to do the question two times because I'm doing it really quickly? Do I need to use the annotation tool to cross answers out? For every um question you miss, you should have a concrete tangible way of not trying to make that mistake again. Otherwise, you're going to keep making that same mistake again. So these three are the first easy ways to do it, right? So let's say you've gotten all that stuff down. Then you're going to move on to the technique number four, which is something called the protege effect. Protege is basically the person who's learning, right? So you after you've started reviewing, you become the teacher and try to teach others. Learning something is okay, but being able to teach somebody else is going to show that you have a stronger mastery of that concept. So teach anybody. You can teach yourself, you can teach your parents, you can teach classmates, you can teach your teddy bears. If you really don't have anybody to teach, then you can, you know, record yourself using your phone, uh, teach Tik Tok, something like that. So, you can create a short video or audio recording or you can form a small group of students who are in the, uh, same AP class suffering alongside you and then you can assign everybody different units, right? Okay, you're going to teach unit one today and I'm going to ## What to Know About This Year’s Digital Format [15:00] teach unit two, you're going to teach unit three. That way you're forcing yourself to really understand the material and then once you teach it then you can find ways to make it more interesting or you can make up analogies or something like that. Um so Richard Fineman came up with a technique like this right? So then you just learn the concept you teach it to somebody else then you return back to figure out how you're going to do it better right and then you're going to come up with analogies. Um, especially with lots of classes that require lots of memorization, come up with fun sentences, uh, like King Henry died by drinking chocolate milk, right? Or please excuse my dear aunt Sally. Um, the hydroalamus gland. Then you're going to hydro the llamas. You're going to make the llamas really wet to control their temperature. There's lots of different like pneummonic devices you can use to help you remember all the stuff that you need for AP classes. Let's say you're having trouble focusing, right? Then you can use something called the Pomodoro technique. There's this app that you can download. It's just Pomodoro. What it really does is it helps you split up your time into effective study chunks, right? So the way Pomodoro works is you just study for 25 minutes, then you take a five minute break. So then that gives you like a time limit. You can also shut off your phone notifications, right? You got to do that. Otherwise, you don't have 25 minutes of fully undistracting time. So for students who have trouble focusing, I would recommend them using an app of some sort to help them time themselves that way. Okay. So now let's say you've gotten all the content material down. Then you want to do practice exams with intentional review. Where are you going to get practice exams? You should be using AP classroom. You should be only using fulllength official practice material. They have these thirdparty books. Kaplan, Princeton Review, McGraill, and I will say 90% of those books are usually garbage. Um, a couple reasons. One is they just basically take the official test material and then they kind of rewrite the questions. And so by rewriting it, it kind of dilutes the effectiveness of the question. And thing number two, the exam is brand new this year being digital. So then if you're studying using a book that was even one year old, it's already outdated. Um, another thing is when you're doing these exams, you want to mimic the actual test day experience. And I say this because look at this um blurb that I copied from the pro proctoring manual. It says you have an hour and 45 minutes to complete section two. You are responsible for pacing yourself and you may proceed freely from one question to the next. So they don't give any warnings. In fact, AP prohibits the use of timer. So like a lot of classrooms are not going to have the time on the wall. So if you don't know how to pace yourself and the first time you're taking the test is official test day, you're going to have a little bit of trouble there. Usually the first couple tests is I talk to students like, "Oh shoot, I ran out of time." I'm like, "Great, you ran out of time. Now you can ## The Full 4-Week Study Plan (Week-by-Week Breakdown) [18:00] know how to redistribute your effort, right?" I compare this to like taking running a marathon. You're not going to have marathon debut the first time you're going to run 26 miles. At least I hope you're not because then you're going to hurt yourself. Um, so what I tell students is they should be starting five to six weeks before the test, but I'm not ready. I don't know everything. It doesn't matter. By sitting down and sitting through it, you can experience the test and then you can understand, wait, I don't remember this material. Okay, that's the part that you need to focus on then, right? If you feel really awkward, the first one can be untimed just so you can kind of get yourself through the test. But then everyone after that should be done in the time settings so you can get used to the time factor in addition to trying to remember all the content. And then of course with every test you want to practice metacognition. Metacognition is then going through after the test reviewing the ones you got wrong answering why you got it wrong and how you won't make that mistake. Right? So that's the metacognition thing that I kind of mentioned that earlier um when reviewing your um school material. So, I do have this four-week study plan. We're kind of within that four four-week window. So, for those of you who are taking tests this year, you may want to modify for your own use. For those of you who are watching at a later date, try to start this at least five or six weeks before the test even. So, you give yourself a little bit of time because, you know, stuff gets in the way. I have a student who has prom this week and I'm like, why do you have prom two weeks before APs? But that's fine. You can you're allowed to have fun. Um, so here's the way I would structure the study plan. This is based off of my 10 plus years of experience. So week one is doing foundations and review, right? So you're going to go through the CED, identify the high yield topics, and then you're going to create your study schedule based off of that. And so what you're going to do then whatever days you can during the week, so I just kind of did seven days, but if you're busy on one day, you're just going to cram it to the other day. But you're just going to systematically go through practice questions for each unit one by one. And then you're going to make flashc cards out of them. And then the idea is that you should be spending even five to 10 minutes per day on the busy days, right? And so if you're taking, you know, four or five AP classes, you can still do that, right? Four to five uh 5 to 10 minutes for four AP classes is like 30 minutes. Hopefully that's doable. Hopefully. Um and then by the end of this week, then you're going to take all the stuff that you've done and either teach a group or teach your teddy bear or something like that. Okay? So by the end of this first week, you should have identified the high yield topics and started itemizing the areas of concern for yourself. That would be the goal of the first week. Moving on to the second week, then you're going to apply to that first exam, right? So you're going to take what you've reviewed, try to apply to the test to the best of your ability. You might suck, and that's okay. Don't be afraid of sucking. In fact, you want to suck so you know where you should address your issues. And then Sunday or whatever the day after you take the um your mock test, you're going to review it. Please review it. Please fill out an error log. I'm not joking when I say you should write it out because studies have shown that writing things out help you remember more efficiently than even typing it or just saying like, "Yeah, I'm going to remember it." I bet uh I bet you're going to forget most of the things that you say, "Yeah, I'm going to remember about." Okay. So, after you review your error log, that's going to kind of be your plan for week two. Then, okay, what were the areas of weakness that were the biggest? So, that's what you're going to review that week. And so, we're going to review that week area, continue to make flashcards based off that weak area. Then, you're going to do week area two, make flashcards, and then you have that group um group lesson at the end of the week again for accountability. If you need help, you should try to get help on reviewing your FRQs. Right? So, just because you know the right answer also doesn't mean that you're answering the question correctly like I've shown you. Moving on to week three, you're going to recycle this, but this time it's going to be more about application and pacing. So, you want to start timing yourself when you're doing your study questions is like, okay, can I do this question within two minutes or three minutes or is it taking me forever? If a question is starting to take you forever, that's when you want to be like, "Okay, I'm gonna skip it or I'm going to dep prioritize it." Um, I don't think I mentioned this yet, but for you to get a five on these exams, you don't need 100%. You need anywhere from 60 to 80% correct, right? So, there are questions or concepts that you can drop by the wayside as you're reviewing. And then you're going to do this again for week four. By the time you're doing week four, you should be pretty familiar with this whole test. So there shouldn't be any major areas of weakness at this point. All this is is just reviewing through the concepts, reviewing your flash cards, putting them in the appropriate shoe box. Okay? And that should lead you to week five. Okay? For the the night or the two nights before the test, then you're going to try to review your cheat sheet. By this time, you should have a very thorough cheat sheet that you're going to basically the night before blurt out everything. Whatever you can blurt out, great. Whatever you can't blurt out, that's going to be the stuff that you're going to review for your final couple days. Okay, moving on. I just have some general tips. This is based off of all the practice tests that I've seen this year and the past years. So, a couple tips for you is um working on vocabulary. So, I think a lot of students end up using the same words over and over again in essays. That not only bores the reader, but it can also detract from your score. So, here are some popular words that I see students use a lot, right? Oh, the author claims. The author believes. Uh, I believe. The author does it well. Right? There's so many more effective ways that you can do this. So, figure out what 10 words you use really often in the essay and literally just go to the.com and find ways to make those words sound more effective. This is not just good for AP exams. It's good for any writing based class that you need to have. This is good for college. you sound much smarter when you're using bigger words, right? And it doesn't have to be every single word, right? I'm just saying focus on the words that you find yourself using most often. In fact, a lot of students tend to struggle with like the long essays because they're like, "Oh, I don't have enough time. I don't know what to do." So, another thing you can do as you're studying is creating an essay skeleton. So, this would be an essay skeleton that I have for a ## How to Improve FRQs + Use Essay Skeletons [24:30] persuasive essay, right? I put a bunch of fancy words in there, but I just learned that essay skeleton. And then you can just plug in whatever topic that you need to do. So, for example, here's the essay skeleton. I can share that with you later if you'd like. And then here's the essay skeleton after I plug in just the certain things that I need to plug in. Now, you can't essay skeleton an entire essay. That'd be really difficult because the topic changes from topic to topic. But for example, for an argumentative essay, you can absolutely use this as your first paragraph and then you can spend more time on the body paragraphs. Um, same for US history, right? You can do an essay skeleton for each of the eight periods because you need to have contextualization for it. So those are things that you can prepare ahead of time to make your test a little bit less painful. Um tip number three I this is where students mess up the most and this is across all practice exams is working on their analysis. Um so these are some what's the word uh pneummonic devices for APO's history they sometimes use soap stone or they sometimes use space cat but basically this is trying to teach students to not just like summarize the topic but to go deeper into like why is why does it matter why is this important so here's an example from you um AP Lang where a student just like re regurgitates what the essay was about Johnson uses facts to support his claim that schools are underfunded. This helps showcases his disappointment in the lack of funding. Notice that this sentence is just a repetition of that, right? But then by really focusing on the analysis, then we see the stronger version writes, Johnson reinforces his assertion that schools are underfunded by providing relevant data. By peppering his essays with impactful figures like $1 billion in debt and 50% deficit, he not only establishes credibility. Oh, that's a reason as an authority on the topic, but also grips their attention, right? So, that's another why is it matter? Why is it important? He grips their attention with these staggering statistics. So, this is one example for English. Here's an example for math. Math is uh full of people who are bad at explaining math. Um, bad answer. The insulated graph is higher than the non-insulated graph. I'm just trying to compare this graph. And then you have the good answer. While the graphs start at the same temperature of 60°, there's a specific point there. At every other time in which the temperature was measured, the insulated graph always had a higher temperature than the non-inssulated graph. Furthermore, the magnitude of change for the non-insulated graph starts off larger. Oops, typo, but that's okay. But approaches zero more quickly than does the magnitude of change for the insulated graph. This first answer would receive no credit. This answer could receive up to two or three points depending on the free response question. Here's another example from calculus. IVT says this exists. This would earn no credit. I shared the example earlier, but if you know how to site the theorem, if you just learn how to site it, that could earn you two or three points there. Here's an example from physics. When potential energy decreases, kinetic energy increases. This might get you one point, but when they ask you to explain in physics, there's often times as many as four or five points to be earned. Uh you need to site the appropriate law. You need to site the situation that the um the context of the problem. So this would get you full credit whereas the first answer would not. Um moving on, we also have students who don't understand how to answer the questions because sometimes the questions will give you a task verb, right? They'll say calculate, construct, describe, determine. Here's examples of a bunch of task verbs. I'm not going to go through all of them, but for example, if a question says calculate, then they're expecting students to show their work. If a question says explain, look at how long this definition is for explain. They're expecting that level of detail in the explanation, too. Versus if a question says identify, that can be answered in a single word or sentence. Right? So, I think a lot of times students don't answer the question because they don't understand that each verb has a different meaning. In fact, I'm just going to point this out to you because I've worked with tons of SAT students. Um, SAT students even even my best ones confuse the word explain with ## Most Common Scoring Mistakes and How to Fix Them [29:00] the word identify. Um, they they think explain and identify mean the same thing, and they truly do not mean the same thing. Um, and I'm just going to reiterate this for all subjects, science, English, math. If a question asks you to explain, please use proper sentences with complete grammar, too. Okay. So then, um, this would be an example that you would want for like AP calculus or something like that. Moving on. Um, reviewing old essays and FRQs. Um, just because you've done the mock exam doesn't mean you're going to be fully cognizant of what you need to do. I put this in the structured study plan, right? But when you're reviewing these old things, these can be ones that you've done in class, too. If you're doing an old essay, highlight just four or five sentences that you could improved on and then rewrite those sentences in a better way. Um, if you have an FRQ, compare that FRQ with the correct answer, and then rewrite the correct answer in your separate cheat sheet. Uh, where are you going to find this information? You can actually go to College Board and find old FRQ. So, for example, here's a link over here. And if you go into College Board, you can see sample responses. So, students are like, I don't know how to write well. Well, you can go look at how other students wrote well and got full credit. Right? So, they have this. This was from last year, and last year people were still handwriting their exams. Um, so sometimes the handwriting can be kind of awful, but now with typing, it's going to be really easy to read. So you can look at what other students did and be like, hm, I really like that. And then you can kind of steal their information. Um, there's nothing wrong with borrowing a couple sentences as long as the the rest of the essay is your original work. Okay. So, um, some resources for you. Um, I do have some of the material that I shared here. If you want any of that, um, you can also re-watch this video. But for those of you who are taking some mock exams and want some extra practice, um, there is an opportunity to do that, uh, my office offers mock exams every Saturday and Sunday in these topics. So, um, I'll put the link in the chat as well if it'll let me. Um, but this is a perfect way for you to get some headway on this whole study plan that I've been talking about. So, some final takeaways about everything that I've kind of reviewed over here. Um, so focus on this 8020 method. Yeah. So, instead of rereading the entire textbook, review the key concepts that show up more often. Instead of re-watching YouTube videos and hoping that you can find the best thing, dive into time practice in instead. That's going to help you a lot more. Instead of studying for 5 hours straight, you want to focus in timed intervals with breaks. So deep focus with breaks. Instead of trying to memorize every single little thing because that's overwhelming, focus on the most common core principles. Instead of viewing every single question as the exact same weight, instead you're going to figure out which ones you're going to prioritize and which are the high yield topics that you can handle. Instead of just like highlighting and rereading, you're going to quiz yourself. You're going to quiz your friends. Um, instead of just looking randomly at thirdparty books because they're so pretty on the cover and say, "Oh, I'm going to guarantee a five." You're going to sit down and take full length official practice tests under time conditions. Um, these are the things that I found that have worked most uh effectively for all my students, but depending on the student, your mile mileage may vary. So, I left time for questions and answers and I'm happy to answer ## Where to Get Real Practice Questions (And What to Avoid) [33:00] questions about AP exams in general or about specific AP exams. Love it. That was a master class. I took notes uh as as well too. So, super amazing. We do have a few questions. Again, for those of you guys who are interested in the mock AP exams, uh I'll drop it one more time in the chat. You guys can use a special link. I'll I'll also be emailing out the special link afterwards. So, if you register for the training, I'll you'll get the the the mock AP exam link as well, too. Uh Joey, one question here is, I know you mentioned the tests are digital, but are they hybrid with FRQs on paper? Uh just wanted to make sure. So, the way it's going to work this year is that the STEM exams are going to be hybrid. Those the multiple choice are going to be done on the computer, but then they're going to give you a blank test book for you to write out any equations and stuff for all the STEM ones. All the humanity ones will be 100% digital. Those essays will be fully typed. Awesome. Uh, next question here was where would the recording be posted? If you register for this training, you will get a replay. give us like 48 hours uh at the time of this recording and then we'll email it out to you guys with the mock AP exam link as well too uh there. If you registered, you're good. If you didn't register, let me know in the chat and somehow you found this this is recording, let me know and we'll send you guys the resources as well too there. Okay. Um question here is, is there a place where we can see practice MCQ questions? Um so there are older ones that are floating around on Google um if you want to look at old ones. So the old ones are probably not as valid. Um they have the same gist though. So the the MCQs that are most effective are going to be through AP classroom. So you can ask your school teacher to unlock those questions for you on AP classroom. Um if you're having difficulty with that, um we also do have an AP classroom for students who are prepping for the AP. That would be the best way. Ask your teacher first and then check in with me second. Love it. Uh one uh parent here asked, I did not see any AP compsai examples. Anything unique about AP compsai? Uh is it principles or if it's or is it a if it's principles, then you're going to need to be able to you have this uh make project where you spent a semester making a project. So that part has its own rubric. Hopefully the teachers gone through with the students on how to do it. Uh but with a computer science A, it's going to be a lot of the same stuff. Um they're going to have to handw write code. So, in that case, it's okay if you're missing like a semicolon or something. Um, but students should practice handwriting code. Love it. Uh, someone asked, "Can the action verb descriptions be shared?" Yeah. Yeah, I'll share those and Yeah. Cool. Ask words. You guys can screenshot it as well too. You guys are You can screenshot it, too, but um I can I can share a document with that. Yeah. Perfect. Awesome. Uh, next one here. Uh, ## Tips for AP Gov, Lang, Chem, and Foreign Language Exams [36:00] can you share insight on the AP US government uh and politics for students who don't find this subject interesting? The content is 100% lecture-based and the units are lengthy. Are the units that lengthy? There's only five units in the AP government. Uh, I wonder why they wouldn't find this stuff interesting because it deals with the actual stuff that impacts our daily lives. You have to learn the Bill of Rights. You have to learn how our government works. You have to learn how the president is elected. I'd be concerned if a student found that boring. Um maybe it's dry or maybe the teacher is boring, but that that stuff is like it's actually happening right now. Like you talk about Supreme Court cases that have an effect on what's happening in our US government right now. Um the the content is actually a semester worth of content. Like if you want to start prepping for it right now, you can follow the plan. I I personally don't think it's that bad. Um, there's a couple uh people, for example, there's uh Himler. Heimler does really good history videos and he does a good job of breaking down that content in uh in an engaging way. So, I I would want to reframe that and think that maybe it's more the teacher than the content itself. Awesome. Next question is, do you have any suggestions for foreign language AP exams? That's the hardest one because that that that's four years of information. Usually you take APs in your fourth or even your fifth year. So, uh, practice writing the essays, practice listening. For people who are really good at the grammar and the writing, it's the listening part. So, then you should start listening. They they probably have a bunch of listening examples on YouTube. Uh, because that's a big part of it. Otherwise, that's the one where I don't know if you can do a four-week study plan on language. That's like a four-ear study plan. Awesome. Cool. That's pretty much I think the rest of the question that kind of overlaps with the the previous ones as well too. So yeah, one more time. Uh if you guys are interested in the mock AP exams, uh I'm going to drop it one more time in the chat. Again, if you registered, I'll send you the link to this as well too. And then uh Joey, if you want to share, I think we have a lot of families who are interested in like um AP prep or like even SAT prep. Can you share if they want to are interested in kind of working with you and think about how can they kind of take next steps there as well too? Uh, I can put my email in the chat. Um, email is info@thinkprep.com. Um, if you want to follow on Instagram, it's think prep. Um, Tik Tok is think. Prep. Uh, Instagram is Think Prep. So, there are ways. Um, I do I do talk about a lot of like AP stuff there and test prep related stuff. Cool. We had a question sneak in here. Uh, your a uh my AP hugs test is in two weeks. How should I prepare? Uh, start with a mock exam. Start that's going to be my answer to every whatever subject you're saying. Start with a mock exam. That way you can kind of figure out where you're where you're going to ## Final Takeaways + How to Work with Joey [39:00] where what you need to focus on. Start with a mock exam. Get that exam reviewed by your school teacher even. Um, that's going to get you brownie points with your teacher, by the way. It's like, "Hey, I did this mock exam on the weekend. Can you help me review my FRQs to see how I can improve?" that shows that you're trying and it uh allows you to establish a relationship with your teacher. Awesome. Cool. I think we're at a natural end of questions. That was an amazing session. If you guys loved it, go ahead and drop a a yes in the chat. You guys loved it. We might bring Joey back for a future. He has a lot more things um uh to help our families out. But thank you so much, Joey uh for the amazing training. Um, again, we'll go ahead and send out um the mock AP exam links and also Joey's um contact information. You guys want to reach out to him um as well for I think he does AP and SAT and ACT exams prep as well too. So, he's uh he's all the preps as well. Perfect. Cool. That's it for this training. I hope you guys enjoy it and I'll see you guys on the next one.