Prepped & Polished SAT Instructor Anooj got a 5 on his AP Chem exam and shows you how to ace your AP Chem exam. Pay close attention to these tips!

Today, I’m going to give you three simple tips on how I got a five on the AP Chemistry exam

#1. Your Class

The AP Chemistry class is really hard. There’s a lot of material you have to go through. But you want to make sure that you complete every homework assignment. Read the entire section that’s assigned for that day, go through all the problems that are assigned, and try to get as much feedback as possible on how you understand that concept.

The reason why I say you want to focus on the class a lot is that you want to get all the concepts of the AP Chemistry material down on a printing pad during the class so that when you’re starting a review for the exam, two to three weeks before it, you’re just focusing on reviewing. You don’t want to be learning concepts or new things for the first time, which can be very time-consuming. It can also hurt your confidence and give you more anxiety. You want to be able to have all the concepts done before then. So, two to three weeks before the exam, make sure that you’ve gone through your coursework and you’ve completed every single concept or read every textbook section that you needed to do.

#2. Reaction Notebook

Get a reaction notebook. What you need to do with the reactions notebook is get just any plain notebook you have. Every time in class or during a review that you see a reaction, write that reaction down in the notebook. The AP exam tests reactions on pretty much every section. Even in one section, you have to predict the products and reactants and balance the reaction.

Sometimes, they don’t really follow the guidelines or the patterns that you see in your prep books. For those particular situations, having these reactions constantly written down, you’re going to start developing an intuition, and you’ll start seeing the patterns and reactions. So, on test day, when you see a reaction, it’s not going to give you any anxiety. You’re just going to go and just write down the product, write down the reaction, and you’re going to know it.

#3. Past AP Exams

Go on to the college board exam website and look for the past AP exams. You can start at the later ones, go through the old ones, or start the older ones, however you want to do it. But go to the free response questions and start solving problems as completely as possible. You don’t want to look at the problem and pretend that you actually know how to do it. You want to go through the entire problem with a pencil. Write it down and come up with an answer.

This is going to prevent you from tricking yourself into thinking that you know how to do it. There’s always a little twist going on in that problem. You didn’t foresee it while you were just looking at it. But when you go and try to solve it out, you’re going to get that practice. Doing that math, the calculation, you’re going to get all of that little practice, all the stuff you’d be doing on test day when you solve those problems. So, go through as many exams as possible. Every time you come up with a concept or get into some trouble, you really want to go into your prep book and start reviewing that specific aspect and solve more problems just like that. For concepts that you’re feeling pretty confident about, just do maybe one or two problems to make sure that you know them. Just go through as many exams as possible and solve as many problems as you can.

There you have it, the three simple tips on how to get a five on the AP Chemistry exam.

  • Tip number one: Make sure you spend a lot of time in class getting the concepts down. That way, you’re not spending Review Time learning new things.
  • Tip number two: Build your own reactions notebook. Just jot down every reaction you see during class review time.
  • Tip number three: Go through as many past AP exams as possible and solve all problems as best as you can, and figure out your weaknesses.

For more information, visit: Prepped and Polished.com.

What was your biggest takeaway from these tips? Do you have any questions for Anooj and Alexis Avila?

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