No idea where to start when it comes to your AP Environmental Science review?
Then stay tuned.
Because in this video, we're going to go over 15 tips that you can start
using to start studying at home as well as tackle the multiple choice and
free response sections of the test.
Before we get started, this video is brought to you by Albert.
If you haven't already created your own free account to start practicing for
your APES exam, be sure to do so using the link in the video description below.
Without further ado though, let's jump into these study tips.
First, let's jump into five study tips that you can start doing at home for
your AP Environmental Science exam.
The first tip we have for you is to make sure that you are practicing,
practicing, and practicing.
The easiest way for you to score well on your AP Environmental
Science exam is to simply expose yourself to a lot of practice.
If you're looking for a free start, the College Board's course
and exam description guide to AP Environmental Science has a practice
test that you can work through.
You may also find it helpful to get an online resource like Albert or to access
College Board's past FRQs to see how past students responded to the free responses.
The second tip we have for you is to make and study with flashcards.
AP Environmental Science is a course that is incredibly vocabulary intensive.
So it can be super helpful for you to create some flashcards and use them
throughout the course of a school year.
There are a ton of pre-made lists out there.
So, if you're looking for some good ones, we link to some in the blog article and
the link in the video description below.
Mathematical units such as meters per second are also super important
to get right on your FRQ section.
So, if you need extra help in reviewing those sorts of resources,
we also link to a helpful resource in the video description below.
In the case where you don't like paper flashcards, you might find
it helpful to find some virtual flashcards from sites like Quizlet.
Tip three when it comes to AP Environmental Science general study
tips is to make sure that you are taking your class and homework seriously
over the course of a school year.
This sounds super simple, but here's why it's important to you.
When it comes to the free response section, it's going to become a lot
easier to respond to the questions being asked of you if you can drawl in
classroom examples that you learned.
So, this means that if you're focusing on your assignments over the course of
a school year, you're going to have a better understanding of the core concepts
that will be tested of you on exam day.
Also, if you don't fully understand something the first time around,
you'll have the benefit of your teacher there to support you.
Our fourth general AP Environmental Science study tip
is to read environmental news.
This may seem a little strange, but the reason why this is helpful is
because it helps you connect what you're learning in class to the real-world.
So, by checking out new sources like the New York Times or Science News,
you're going to be able to understand how the concepts and principles that
you're learning in class relate to what actually happens in the real-world.
This again, makes it a stronger connection for you when you are then assessed on
this particular concept come test day.
Our fifth general APES tip is to think about how what you
learned connects to the big four.
So, whenever you finish studying a topic or unit, try to think about how it
connects to one or two of the big ideas.
For example, in unit one, one of the main big ideas is energy transformation.
So as you study geochemical cycles, you're going to want to be able
to articulate the following.
How energy is moved in each cycle and how energy is transferred in every step.
If you can articulate these two things when it comes to each cycle, then
you'll definitely be able to nail any geochemical cycle question on your exam.
Remember the big four ideas.
Idea one, energy transfer.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed, always transferred.
Big idea two, interactions between systems.
Systems change when they interact.
Big idea three, interactions between different species environment.
This simply refers to the idea that humans impact the earth.
Big idea four, sustainability.
To survive, humans need sustainable systems.
Before we jump into some multiple choice tips, if you find this video helpful, do
us a favor and hit that like button below.
Also, consider subscribing for more AP review content like this.
Now that we've tackled some general AP Environmental Science tips, let's
jump into multiple choice tips.
The first tip for you is to make sure that you're always fully reading the question
first, before you respond to the question.
It can be super easy to get distracted by diagrams, data presentations, or
texts, and not focus on the actual question that's being asked of you.
You only have a little over a minute to answer every single question.
So it's important for you to hone in on what's being asked of you so that
you can actually answer that question.
Our second tip, when it comes to the multiple choice section
is to know population dynamics.
This is a concept that is frequently tested when it comes to the AP
Environmental Science exam and now that you have the ability to use a calculator
on your APES exam, you're going to be able to answer these questions even faster as
long as you remember these two formulas.
The first one is the rule of 70, which is a calculation to figure
out the amount of time that it takes for a population to double in size.
The easiest way to figure this out is that the doubling rate equals 70
divided by the population growth rate.
The second important calculation is the population growth rate.
This simply tells you how fast a population is growing or contracting.
Population growth rate is just a percent change formula.
So, it's the number of deaths subtracted by the number of births
divided by the total population size.
Tip three when it comes to the multiple choice section is to make sure
that you're practicing your pacing.
You're going to have 90 minutes to answer 80 questions.
This puts you at about a pace of a minute and 12 seconds per question.
So if a question is taking you way too long, it is better for you to circle that
question and come back to it and move on than it is for you to continue to invest
a lot of time in an individual question.
That leads us naturally to tip number four, which is to make sure that you
are answering every single question when it comes to the multiple choice section
of your AP Environmental Science exam.
The reason why is because there is no guessing penalty.
So, it is better for you to make sure that you have an answer for every single
multiple choice question than it is for you to leave 10 or 15 questions blank
simply because you ran out of time.
Tip five is to prioritize your study time on the heavily weighted topics related
to the APES multiple choice section.
There are three units that are frequently tested way more often than other
units when it comes to your APES exam.
The three topics that appear more on the exam are from unit
nine, unit three and unit four.
Those corresponded with global change, populations and
earth systems and resources.
If you're watching this video with not too much study time
left, focus on these three units.
It'll pay you bigger dividends than focusing on other areas.
Before we head into the five tips to tackling your APES FRQs, if you're
finding this video helpful, do us a favor and hit that like button below.
By doing so, you'll help this video get discovered by more AP
environmental students like yourself.
Now let's wrap things up with five helpful FRQ tips for your AP Environmental exam.
The first one is to make sure that you know the free response
format and what your strengths are.
The College Board does us a little favor by telling us exactly what order
questions will be presented to us in.
For example, question number one is always going to ask us
to design an investigation.
Questions two and three will ask you to analyze an environmental
problem and propose a solution.
Tip two is to practice reading and writing common and novel data presentations.
The AP Environmental Science exam is full of diagrams and data presentations.
So it's really important that you understand how to read a title,
read axes and the data points that are being presented to you.
You're often going to see things like energy pyramids and food chains.
If you're looking for more of these commonly assessed diagrams, there
are helpful Pinterest boards that break these down if you want to
just search for those on Google.
This actually connects to our earlier tip on reading environmental news, because
when you read environmental news, you'll also start to see more diagrams there and
from there, you'll be able to understand what's being presented of you and be
able to summarize the key takeaways from the data that's being presented of you.
The big thing to remember here is to always focus on being able to
summarize the one or two important things from the data or data
presentation that's being shown to you.
Tip three is to make sure that you're understanding the task birds
and what they're asking of you.
The College Board always uses these sorts of taskers when it
comes to the AP Environmental Science free response section.
You're going to be asked to do things like calculate, describe,
explain, identify, justify, make a claim and propose a solution.
When you're asked to calculate something, you're going to be asked to do a
mathematical operation and show the steps that you took to get to your final answer.
When describing something you're going to want to talk about
different characteristics of the thing that's being asked of you.
When explaining things, it's all about talking about the how
and the why something happens.
With questions like these, you'll be referencing relationships, questions,
processes, and different situations.
Identifying things is super straightforward.
You simply have to indicate that you know what is being asked of you and you don't
have to provide a further explanation.
Justifying things is all about supporting or defending some sort of claim or
perspective in response to a question.
Making a claim is to make an assertion based on evidence or knowledge.
And finally proposing a solution is to come up with something that
solves the problem based on the evidence or knowledge that you have.
Tip four is that this scoring guidelines are often like answer keys.
So it can be helpful for you to use them a lot.Reference these past scoring
guidelines to understand what's going to be assessed of you when it comes to your
respective AP Environmental Science exam.
The questions may be different, but the targeted skills will often be the same.
You can use online resources like Albert for extra free response help as well.
As you work your way through some of these scoring guidelines, here
are some things to keep in mind.
You're gonna want to take note of how the graders only grade
the first things that they read.
So, if the question asks you to list three supports and you list 10, the graders only
going grade your first three responses.
You're also going to want to take note as to how specific answers have
to be and how vocabulary is scored.
As you work your way through more scoring guidelines, you'll start to notice
how each part is graded independently.
That means that you might get part a wrong, but you're still able
to score points on parts B C, D.
Lastly, as you work your way through these scoring guidelines, make sure that
you can clearly articulate why you got a particular question right or wrong.
It's only by being able to explain why you got a particular question wrong and
how that has changed your understanding of the core topic, that you'll be able
to improve on your AP Environmental Science free response section.
Our fifth tip is to create a formula sheet and practice showing your work clearly.
It's really important that you show your work clearly so that you can score
full points on your free response.
There are some helpful YouTube videos that do breakdowns of AP Environmental
Science free response questions, and do a great job of showing their work.
So check those out if you're looking for a look over my shoulder
approach to answering FRQs.
We also recommend you create an environmental science formula sheet
that you frequently referenced back to and internalize throughout
the course of your studying.
We went over the rule of 70 and the population growth rate
formulas earlier in this video.
So you can rewind those if you want to, to start, but there's also
some other important formulas that you're going to want to remember.
These include formulas related to productivity, population
density, and birth and death rates.
We link to a Google document in the accompanying blog post.
If you're looking for some more formulas to internalize.
There you have it, 15 environmental science study tips to help you score
that four or five on your APES exam.
If you're looking for even more study tips, be sure to check out
the accompanying blog article in the link in the video description below.
If you found this video helpful, do us a favor and smash that like button below.
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