Youre Doing It WRONG Strategies for AP Exam Multiple Choice

stimulus based multiple choice questions you either love them or you hate them I'm just kidding everybody hates them they're confusing they take too long and they are the source of endless AP exam season anxiety but they don't have to be and so in this video I'm going to help you understand how to approach these questions and if you follow my advice you will almost certainly improve because you can't get five on that exam without doing fairly well on those multiple choice questions which makes up 40% of your score so let's figure it out and everything I'm about to say applies to AP Euro AP US and AP World so if you're ready to get them brain cows milked let's get to it okay so first let's talk about the time you'll have 55 of these questions and you'll have 55 minutes to complete them which if you carry the one and multiply by the sine wave is roughly 1 minute per question and here's what you may be forgetting the people who make these tests know how long you have for this section and that is important to remember because that means that they're not expecting you to spend hours pouring over these documents and coming to deep understanding about them you've got to read them fairly quickly and just get the gist and if that's what you're currently doing and it feels like you're doing it wrong well you're not because that is all you have time for okay second let's talk order of operations which which is to say what is the first second and third thing you should do with every one of these questions and pay attention here because your instinct is probably to do things in the exact opposite way that I'm about to show you so when you open to question your instinct is to read the stimulus first and then skip this part entirely and then start reading through the questions but if you do it that way you are surely going to run out of time and fail your exam drop out of school and then have to live in van down by the river so here is the proper order of operations that is going to keep you on task first read the question know you're going to be tempted to read that stimulus first but restrain thyself if you read the question first then you know what you need to to look for in the stimulus and that is going to save you time second read the attribution like this little line right here is not throwaway test it's going to give you some really valuable information including the time period you need to be thinking about and the people or entities involved in the stimulus and then third read the stimulus and when you do read it quickly marking whatever you think might help you answer the question that you've already read okay third now that you've read and interpreted the stimulus it's time to answer the question you'll have four possible answers to choose from and those answers will be one of three species you're going to have two obviously wrong answers and the reason that they're wrong is because they're in different time period than the question is asking about which is most common or they're giving you different historical thinking skill than the question asked about Which is less common what mean is if the question ask you about how events in the stimulus caused change in something then obviously the wrong answer could indicate continuity which is to say you know not change and then there's what's called distractor which is diabolical invention conceived in the Deep Blackness of the college board exam writing heart this is an answer that is often factually correct but ultimately doesn't answer the questions they're asking and is there only to distract you squirrel and then finally there is the right answer so the first thing you need to do is to eliminate the two obviously wrong answers and here's where take moment for parenthetical remark like know it's easy for me to say eliminate the obviously wrong answers like I've been teaching these courses for long time and the obviously wrong answers jump out at me immediately but unless you have just flat out mastered the content of this course then what say are obviously wrong answers are not going to be so obvious to you and so the remedy for that is twofold and they both have to do with studying first let me emphasize yet again that there is no substitute for knowing the content of your course get those vocab vocabulary words firmly stuffed into your brain folds and that is going to go long way second you need to arrange those Concepts in the time periods of the course if you know what vocabulary goes in what period Then the obviously wrong answers will become more obvious because you'll know that they're trying to trick you with the wrong time period okay parenthesis close okay now all of that is higher level strategy and now I'm going to give you few ground level tactical tips for the multiple choice section in general first answer all the questions blank circles get no credit but if you fill in circle hey you know you got 25% chance that it's right second don't change your answer unless you are 100% sure that you put down the wrong answer and know that's scary but go with your gut here and it's going to serve you better than overthinking it plus you don't have time to overthink it so listen to that gut it's the Transcontinental Railroad thanks gut third if you're not convinced of what just said then he this you don't have to do as well in these questions as you think you do in order to score five now the percentages do change every year and of course there are three other sections on the exam to factor in but in general those students who score in the mid 70s on the multiple choice are on their way to five in The Wider High School world the 75 isn't something to shout from the rooftops see get degrees they sure do but an AP exam world baby if you get 75 you just want okay multiple choice there's only one section on the exam so you need to click here next to figure out how to write those essays and if you're feeling saucy you can click here if you want bunch of practice multiple choice questions with explanations for the answers which is real helpful when you're studying so good luck on that exam and I'll catch you on the flipflop I'm rout