Hey. It's Mr. Andersen and it's 2013. If you're taking AP Biology that's really important
because this year they redid the whole AP Biology curriculum and that means if you're
taking the exam it's a new improved and very different exam than any one that's been given
in the past. And so no student or teacher can tell you exactly what the test is going
to look like because no one's taken it yet. And so it's important that you learn how this
test is going to be different and so you can prepare for it. Because hopefully you're watching
this video months ahead of the AP exam so you can prepare for it. But even though you
might be watching it the night before the exam cramming, you can still pick up some
tips that are going to help you on the test tomorrow. And so what is an AP exam? Basically
it's an exam that shows how well you know the material. And do you know it at the level
of a college introductory class? And so you're going to take this test. It's over three hours
long. It's two parts to it. And then you're going to get your scores in the summer. And
when you get your scores in the summer, it's going to come in an envelope and all it's
going to have is a number inside it. It's going to say that you got a five, a four,
a three, a two or a one. And if you got a five, a four a three, then you passed it.
And if you got a two or a one then you didn't. And almost a quarter of a million students
are going to take it on that same exact day at that same exact time. And about half of
them are going to fail it. And so I want you to get to the area that you're in of a five,
a four or a three. Why is that? Well basically if you get a five on an AP exam, it means
that you could get an A in an introductory biology class. And if you get a four it's
like getting an A-, B+ or B. And if you get a 3 it's like getting a B -, C+, C. And so
it's really important that you understand the mechanics of the test to do well. And
it's basically broken down into two parts. You have section one, which is going to be
multiple choice section. And then you have section two which is going to be free response.
And each of those sections are going to give you half of your score on the AP exam. So
it's fifty percent in each of those. And that's different than the way it was in the past.
First part is going to be multiple choice. And you're going to have 90 minutes to complete
it. You're going to have 63 multiple choice questions. And each of those questions are
going to have four responses. It used to be five in the past. And then you're going to
have six grid-in questions. Grid-in questions are you're going to use a calculator to answer
this. It's going to be a problem and then you're going to grid-in your responses and
I'll show you how to do that. In the free response or the essay portion, you're going
to have 10 minutes to read the essays and then you're going to have 80 minutes to write
your essays. And those essays, there are going to be eight of them. You're going to have
two long free response for essay questions and then you're going to have six short free
responses. And so let's get to the multiple choice. If I could give you some tips, the
first tip would be to study. Don't cram. If you prepare over a long period of time you
can do better on this portion. You should use a study book to prepare. I like the Cliffs
Notes book. The problem is that if it's before 2013 it's going to be for the old test. And
so the content might help you but the test is simply going to confuse you. And then you
should take a bunch of practice exams. So there are going to be those in those review
books. But you should also be able to find a bunch of questions online. And for multiple
choice you want to do as many of these questions as you can. It's going to give you practice
and it's going to give you confidence. You want to budget your time. Even though there
are 60 some multiple choice questions, 63, the grid-in questions are going to take a
longer period of time. And so you want to make sure that you're not spending too much
time on those multiple choice questions so you can't get to the grid-in. And then you
want to use a process of elimination. In other words you can write on your test. And so you
want to start crossing off answers if you know that those aren't right. And then you
may have to eventually come to the point where you make a guess. Watch out for reverse questions.
And so you can have questions that will say for example, all of the following are found
in cellular respiration except. And if you don't see that word except, you're going to
jump at the first wrong answer. And so let me give you an example of a multiple choice
question. You could go to this website down here on the bottom, AP. The College Board
has released a practice questions and so you could go through a bunch of them as practice.
And so basically what you're going to get is you're going to get a lot of information
at the top. Probably more information than they used to get on the AP Biology exam. In
this case they're giving you information on a lab and they're telling you some data right
here. And then they're going to basically send you to the question. In this questions
they're talking about what should be included in this setup. And so the right answer in
this case is going to be A. But then you'll notice that they're going to give you another
question that's related on that same. And so you may have three questions that just
go from this certain amount of information that you get a the beginning. And so you could
pause the video if you want to take a look at this and then guess what the right answer
is. In this case the right answer is A again. And so I don't want to go over these questions,
I just kind of want to show you what they're going to look like. You then move on to the
grid-in portion. The grid-in portion you're going to have an area where you can work and
you're also going to be able to use a four function calculator. So not you're TI-84,
but you are going to be able to use a simple calculator. So that mean's that there's going
to be problems that require you to use a calculator. The answers that you get you're going to grid-in.
And let me show what that means. Let's say you get the answer 502. You're basically going
to fill in it on a form like this. You'd write 502 right here but then you're going to have
to grid-in the 5, the 0 and the 2. And for a lot of these questions there's going to
be a range and so you're answer has to be in a specific range. If you were to grid in
502 you could do it like that, but you could also do it like that and you could also do
it like that. And they've assured us that the computer is going to figure out that you
got the right answer. But how do you put in something like this? -4.13. How would you
grid that in? Well you can see that there's a negative right here. And so you would first
of all write it across the top, -4.13. But then you're going to grid it in just like
this. You've got to put a decimal point in there so the computer can read that. Or let's
say we were to do -2/10, and I probably should simplify that, but how would you put that
in? You're going to put a negative again, but then we're going to be able to put this
fraction bar in. So you can say it's -2/10. So that's how you physically put in your answer.
But what are the questions going to look like on the grid-in portion? Well here's an example
of one. So they're giving you a genetic problem up here. They're saying that we're planting
146 seeds. These are the plants that come up. And then they're asking you to calculate
the Chi-squared value. Now you might freak out like I don't know what the Chi-squared
formula is. Well the nice thing about the test is they're going to give you a formula.
You can find that on the website as well and it's going to give you all the formulas that
you might have to use on the test. In this case it's going to give the Chi-squared. But
don't think you're going to go into the test and just be able to kind of since I've got
all the formulas I'm going to be able to figure it out. You want to make sure you go through
that formula sheet so you know what the formulas actually mean. And so in this case we figure
out our expected values and then you're going to come up with your observed values and then
come up with a Chi-squared test, what the answer is. Let's go on to the essay portion.
The essay portion, after the multiple choice basically you get a break. And they give you
a certain amount of time to break. And then you're going to have the essay portion. For
the essay portion they'll give you a sheet that looks, this is on of my old students
sheets, and basically they'll let you see all the essays and they'll let you write on
that sheet of paper, but you can't start writing your essays yet. They'll give you ten minutes
to plan. This is super important. You'll want to go through, read the questions. And you
want to kind of have a plan of attack so that when the clock starts then you can start writing
your essay and doing the work. So you want to write yourself a bunch of notes all over
this essay question form. Let me give you some tips on the essay. You want to make sure
you read the question and then you read the question and then you read the question again.
In other words, read it over and over and over again. Make sure you know what they're
actually asking. You don't want to miss points because you didn't really understand what
they were asking. You want to answer everything. Don't leave any place blank. You want to make
a stab at it. You want to budget your time. And you want to leave space in your answer
form. In other words if you know that, man there's one more thing that I want to talk
about. Leave space. Go on. And then come back and then you can fix the essay a little bit
later. You want to understand direction words. What are those? Well in the essays they're
going to be, they're going to be direction words that tell you basically what they want.
So it might say to explain how photosynthesis gets free energy from the sun. Or they may
ask you to describe the different steps in the cell cycle. Or discuss the results that
you see. And these terms are super important. And the reason they look weird here is that
I went through years of essays. I looked at all of these direction words and I found the
ones that are asked most frequently. And these are them. And so you're going to have propose
and construct and draw. Label. But these are the big ones that you want to understand.
So you want to know what it means to explain something. What does that mean? It means to
make it understandable. Or to describe is to give properties of. And so you want to
make sure that what these terms are that you can understand what they're really asking
for. So let's get to what a long free response is going to look like. There's going to be
two of those. They're supposed to take you about twenty minutes to answer each one. You'll
answer them in essay form. So you can't just write bullet points. And you can't just write
an outline. You really have to write an essay. Like an essay might be. And you'll write these
in pen. And so basically they're going to have multi parts to it, these long responses.
So it's going to give you some information here. It's going to ask you to graph the data
for part A. It's going to ask you to draw a curve for part B. You can see here's some
of those direction words like explain, describe, justify, draw, explain. We can see that again.
And so you're going to want to answer every part of this. Now these essays are going to
be graded by humans in the summer. And so you want to make sure that you're writing
so that they can read it and that you're making sense. Don't worry about grammar. Don't worry
about spelling. You just want to get your thoughts out there. Because you can get points
for everything that you do. And so basically they'll show you how this one would be graded,
but you could get five points just from this first part. Graph it and then to explain the
curve. You could get 2 points from this, 2 points from this, 3 points from this. So there's
a lot of points out there. The maximum you can get would be ten points from one of these
long free responses. And so what that means is I see way more then 10 here, and so you
can get your points in different areas. And so you want to put out as much information
as long as it's the right information, you want to put that forward. Short free responses
are going to look short. These should take you about six minutes each and there's going
to be six of these. Again you write it in essay form and you're going to use a pen to
do that. In this case they're giving you some data and asking you to describe and explain.
This one right here, they're giving you data and they're asking you to explain. So again
we see those direction words. And so you may want to look at this url right down here.
And then look at the essays and then they'll show you what you should have written. In
other words how these would be graded. So you'll maybe get 4 or 3 points from this one.
So what do you study? What do you study to get ready for this test. Well this year the
test is built on two things. We have what are called science practices. And there are
seven of those. For example a student can use representations in models to communicate
phenomena. A student can use mathematics. I'm not going to list all of these. But basically
there are seven practices that you should have developed throughout the year. Now I'm
going to make videos on each of these practices and will have a link right here to a playlist
that's not done yet. It's going to bring you to those practices so you know what they are.
And then we're going to have the content. The essential knowledge. And there are 55
essential knowledges that you should understand in AP Biology. And I've created a video for
each of these. And so there's going to be a playlist again right here. You can click
on and it's going to bring you to a video of each of these 55 essential understandings.
And basically the way the test is going to be written is they're going to put those essential
knowledge on one side, 55 of them. The practices on the other side. And then they're going
to choose the questions by simply saying, Okay. Science Practice 2, using mathematics
and then this knowledge, let's say this is about free energy, then they're going to have
a question that asks you to understand the knowledge and then how to use the practice.
And so the test is different this year. They're really going to have you doing more science.
They're going to have you doing math. And not just doing factual recall. Because in
the previous test there were a lot of questions that were simply essential knowledge. If you
know what happened in metaphase then you're going to get that question right. It's different
now. The questions are going to be more difficult, more application, but hopefully you've prepared
for that whole year. And I hope this was helpful.