Surviving AP US History (APUSH)

AP US History, at least at my school, is not a horribly challenging class to get a good grade in. As long as you pay attention in class and do your homework you will be fine. The only things I find challenging is keeping the timeline straight because our book sometimes goes out of order of when things happen. So if you are in the class or planning on taking it, make sure to pay attention to when things happen.

I have previously taken two other advanced placement social studies courses and I would say this is not really different than the other two. It is mostly learning about when things happened, why they happened, and the effect they had. You probably already know some of the material that this class covers so there isn’t anything brand new to cover. But, this class does go into greater detail that you will have to analyze.

When writing the free response questions make sure to include specific events or examples for evidence that supports your claims. The new advanced placement grading system is looking more for you to be able to recall these events when writing. So even if your thesis is correct if you don’t have specific examples to support it you could still loose points on it. This can be the difference between a four and a five.

The document based questions are like any others you might have encountered in any other advanced placement social studies class. You get ten to fifteen documents and a question that you use the documents to answer. However there are sometimes documents that might prove the opposite of what your claim is. With these documents you don’t have to use them, it is worse to use documents incorrectly than to not use them at all.  Most of the time, the answer to the question is in the documents and is not too complicated or difficult to figure out.

I would recommend taking this course because I have heard it gets you out of a lot of general education classes in college.  It is a good boost to your GPA and looks great on college resumes. I think it is easier than my previous two advanced placement social studies classes, which were AP European history and AP Human Geography, but it is still going to be more challenging that the regular class. However, if you pass out of some college classes, it is worth it, because it will save you both time and money.

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