Pay attention and complete all your assigned work in your AP U.S. History class. No amount of cramming or last minute preparation can replace the knowledge gained from a year of study.
Visit the AP United States History course homepage on the College Board website. This website has a enormous amount of information regarding the test itself and the AP U.S. History course as a whole. The page includes lesson plans, special history content, exam information, past exams and sample questions. You can find a link to the page in the Resource section of this article.
Get an understanding of the three types of questions you will have to face on the exam. There are 80 multiple choice questions that you will have 55 minutes to answer. After that, you will have 15 minutes to review the documents for your document-based question (DBQ), and then 115 minutes to write three essays, one on the document-based question and two others.
Focus your study on the same parts of U.S. history that the exam will focus on. According to the College Board website the multiple choice questions will break down as follows: 20 percent will be about the Pre-Columbian era to 1789; 45 percent will be about events from 1790 to 1914; and 35 percent will be about events from 1915 to the present. Additionally, 35 percent of the questions will center around public institutions, behavior and public policy; 40 percent of the questions will center around social change and developments; 15 percent will focus on international relations and diplomacy; and 10 percent will focus on economic developments.
Ask your AP U.S. History teacher if you can take a practice exam. AP teachers can get access to a practice exam that they can use for face-to-face instruction. While the questions on the practice exam have never been used on a real test, the exam is designed to be exactly as difficult as the real AP U.S. History exam.
Review the old exam essay questions on the College Board website. The website has all the essay questions from the tests between 1999 and 2010. In addition to the questions the website has selected essays that were scored well and the scoring guidelines for those questions, so you can get an example of what the scorers are looking for.
Practice your DBQ. The essay part of the AP U.S. History exam accounts for 50 percent of your grade, and the DBQ accounts for 45 percent of the essay question score. In addition to being a normal essay, which requires a clear thesis and supporting information, the DBQ requires that you reference the presented material when you make your case. Take time to go over the old tests and get an idea of the kind of documents you will be presented with, and how you will incorporate them into your essay.