Are AP exams important When is the best time to prepare for AP exams

The AP exam has always been regarded as a "stepping stone to Ivy League schools", and it actually has a very heavy weight in the application for studying abroad.

01 Increase GPA scores to prove learning ability

There are two algorithms for GPA, and the traditional full grade is "unweighted GPA", which has the disadvantage of not taking into account the difficulty of different courses.

And American universities like to look at the student's weighted GPA because the weighted GPA will take into account the type of course, such as the A of the regular course may be; However, AP course A may be, and at the end, all course scores are added together and averaged, which is the weighted GPA.

02 Evidence of learning ability and development potential

Because the AP course itself is the content of the freshman year of American college, its difficulty is naturally higher than the content exposed to in high school.

In addition, students must consider the major direction of the future university in the selection process of AP courses, so it is also a reflection of the student's ability to cope with difficult college courses, which will make a very good impression on admissions officers. In addition, after obtaining a certain grade, it will also become the best proof of the student's learning ability and development potential.

03 Get credits in advance to save time and money

Most universities in the U.S. accept AP exams and award college credit. Completing a certain number of AP credits in middle school means graduating one to two years early.

In the U.S., it costs about $1,000 to earn college credit at one institution, and one AP course can cost about three to six college credits. Therefore, any AP course taken by Chinese students may be converted into three to six credits after arriving in the United States, which is $3,000 to $6,000.

Roll AP has also become another hot trend in applying to American colleges and universities! An AP transcript can prove your interest in the subject to the admissions officer, and it is also a great plus for international students!

If you want to enroll in an American university, then AP is even more important. In addition to saying that AP scores can be used to deduct the credits of the corresponding courses after the admission of students who successfully apply to American universities, AP scores have also become an important basis for admitting students to American universities (AP scores have become an important assessment content of whether students have excellent learning ability and whether they can challenge themselves, and are an important basis for universities to assess students' intelligence, expertise and learning ability, and an important aspect to show students' core competitiveness).

Nowadays, the competition for studying in the United States has become more and more fierce, and TOEFL and SAT scores can no longer meet the requirements of undergraduate applications to prestigious American universities. Therefore, AP college course test scores have become the focus of many college admissions (although few American universities explicitly require students to provide AP college course test scores in the admissions brochure, in fact, many universities, especially elite schools, have taken AP scores as an implicit indicator for selecting students, and some people even pointed out that AP unified test scores are one of the most important indicators for colleges to select new students). AP college test scores have become an absolute necessity for admission to top universities in the United States.

For high school students who apply to top schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc., it is best to provide more than 4-6 AP scores to universities.

1. Basic knowledge learning stage:

History, literature, biology, computer science and other subjects that require a lot of memorization and are more difficult are recommended to start studying in the fall, otherwise the later study will be very intense.

Economics, mathematics, science and engineering and other subjects are recommended to start studying during the winter vacation.

There are no official test preparation textbooks for each subject, and the mainstream test preparation books are divided into three series: Princeton, Baran, and Capland.

2. Past Exam Training Stage:

Be sure to answer the questions in the form of a real exam.

Learn to plan your time wisely and learn to make trade-offs when you encounter problems.

If you find any problems after the exam, you must mark them and summarize and review them in time.

3. Pre-exam sprint stage:

One to two weeks before the exam, it is time to enter the pre-exam sprint stage. The main task of this stage is to review the knowledge points, review the wrong question book, and conduct simulations before the exam to maintain the exam status.

If you don't have time to brush the questions before, you can also use this stage to brush the questions regularly. After each set of questions, summarize the knowledge points of the wrong questions and solve them one by one.