AP Exam Tips: The Five Best Ways to Get Through This Season

Working to Win//Studying for her AP World History exam, sophomore Natalia Arieli reviews notes from past units and highlights important points from review videos. She follows a scheduled plan that organizes her studying into daily categories so that she can do the best on her exam in a couple of weeks. (Photo by Natalia Arieli)

They’re finally here: the dreaded AP exams. With AP exam season in full swing, anxious high schoolers of all grades hurry to memorize all their AP Human Geography vocabulary, remember AP World History time periods, and practice AP Pre-Calculus double-identity formulas. There is no doubt that Quarter 4 is one of the toughest, concerning AP students everywhere. It is thought that there is simply no time to fit in all the studying and maintain good mental health. Many AP students have an incredible amount of extracurriculars, not to mention that they may also take  other classes that they take that demand work as well that aren’t AP courses. For some, it feels like AP exam season is tearing them apart, but it doesn’t have to. There are many ways to fit in all of the things you need to do for your exam, as well as keep a healthy well-being. With these five helpful tips, you can get a five on your AP exam and keep your head held high throughout it all.

1. Getting Sleep

One of the most detrimental stress factors is not getting enough sleep. As a high school student knows by heart, sleep just doesn’t happen sometimes. From hours of sports or clubs after school to waking up unnecessarily early, it can be hard to find time to get all of your work done as well as get much needed sleep. With AP exams rolling around, this is even more true for students. With the insane amount of work and studying you have to do, it seems like putting a couple of things off for the next day would be incredibly detrimental to your already full load of homework. However, doing all of your homework instead of getting sleep can harm you even more.

Imagine you have just completed your five hours of homework and finish at 3:00 am. It may seem like a huge accomplishment at the moment, but getting up 2 hours later will not. Even if you do finish all of your homework, the next day will feel like torture to study. With the overwhelming exhaustion, it’ll be extremely hard to put any effort into your work at all. This is so much worse than finishing all your homework the night before, as getting up the next day to do it all again will not only be detrimental to your mental health and well-being, but you will not be able to do your best on assignments or focus clearly enough to study and remember anything you’ve done. However, there is a better solution to finish all your homework and get some more sleep.

Instead of staying awake all night to finish everything you have to do, set an alarm for yourself. Pick a specific time you want to stop studying (that isn’t 3:00 am) and stop exactly when that timer goes off. Even if that’s only 1-2 hours, getting at least a decent amount of homework done and out of the way will still feel like an accomplishment. While that may add on to homework for the next day, it lets you wake up with a more awake mind, letting you be more motivated and have more energy to try to catch up.

2. Mental Health Days

Paired with sleep, this topic leads to the next tip. Adding more homework that you didn’t finish the day before can feel like an extreme overload, especially with the day continuing to have an incredible amount of extracurriculars as well as having to go to school. This is where I tell you that, some days, you need to take a break. It may feel impossible sometimes, but your clubs and afterschool sports will not suffer if you take a day off to complete homework as well as catch up on sleep. Even your schoolwork that you will be missing will not be extremely harmful to you in the future if you’re able to take the whole day off to focus on the things you need to and get caught up with everything. 

Most times, mental health days really allow your mind to get centered again and allow you to be more focused and awake, which can benefit your well-being as well as the status of your exam studying, especially for AP exams. Of course, it’s not extremely beneficial to take off every single day of the week as mental health days, as that’ll get you pretty off-track with things, but a day or two can really change your whole mindset.

3. Stop Procrastination

I know. Easier said than done. However, procrastination can be one of the biggest blocks for some people when it comes to just getting started on homework. Most days, it feels like torture to look at your schedule and your studying and work and think that you have to do all of it, so you put it off. That’s probably the worst thing you can do when it comes to studying for AP exams, especially with limited time to study for all the content you need for them. In order for you to really be on-track for your AP exams, you really don’t have the time for procrastination. There are things you can do though to get you to stop procrastination. 

One beneficial tip is to reward yourself. Set a timer for 2-3 hours and study and do homework straight for those couple of hours without a break. DO NOT look at your phone to go on TikTok or Instagram at any time during those hours. Once the timer is done, you can take a small break for half an hour or for you to do whatever you want to do. Once those couple of hours are done, it’ll feel like a huge accomplishment to do all of that work without procrastinating. Most of the time, stopping procrastination is discipline, so, if you made it through just those few hours without stopping, you’ll most likely build the habit to do it again. Just be sure to take breaks, staring at a screen or textbook for six hours straight isn’t the most ideal for your motivation or your mental health.

4. Make a Schedule

Even if you’re a Type B person, setting a planned schedule for what and when you’re going to study for your AP exams can feel like such a relief. Planning ahead for what you will do each day leading up to your exams can feel like a lot of work, but it sets you up for success in the long run. Waiting until the last minute to cram all of the studying, reviewing, and memorizing you have to do for any of your exams is not the best idea if you want to do well on them. It will only give you more stress and your brain will not be able to focus and retain all of the information you are trying to get into your head before taking the exam. 

Therefore, planning ahead and sticking to a schedule is the best way to make sure you are fully prepared for it. There are so many ways you can make a schedule. For example, I personally prefer Google Keep to have bullet points that I can check off when all my tasks for the AP exam are done, as well as keep different notes for each of my AP exams. However, there are so many other resources that you can use, such as Google Docs, a manual paper planner, Google Slides or even your phone’s notes app. This is one of the best ways to make sure you’re prepared and have studied everything you need to in time for the AP exam.

5. Meditation

From personal experience, meditation isn’t always the most comfortable activity to do. However, it can help so much with stress and anxiety, and increase your confidence throughout the day. It may seem like you may have absolutely no time to fit in anything else in your schedule, but meditation does not have to be a 10-minute or even 5-minute thing you have to do. Meditation can quite literally be you closing your eyes for one minute and breathing, trying not to think, and just calm and clear your mind. 

Doing this before you start on homework or before you go to school will level your thoughts and allow you to feel more prepared and calm before starting on something. It can even be a 2 minute meditation session before going to sleep that can help you relieve any unnecessary thoughts and stress about AP exams and the next day’s load. This can possibly help you fall asleep faster as well as be more relieved and calmer. There are many ways you can meditate as well, from finding videos on YouTube to downloading mindfulness apps like Calm or Headspace. Although meditation seems unnecessary, it really can help in times of stress, especially concerning AP exam season.

While AP exams are stressful for everyone, there are many ways you can relieve that stress and anxiety when it comes to the weeks and even days leading up to the exam. Through tips for getting more sleep, taking days off for mental health, stopping procrastination, making a schedule, and meditation, you can make your AP exam season experience more calm and you’re better prepared, so you can get the best score possible for your exam as well as keep your mental health intact.