5 Tips to Win for AP Human Geography

Understanding AP Human geography

I started Advanced Placement (AP) Human Geography, also know as “APHG”, in the fall semester, which is a bit late for self-studying, but still manageable if you stay on top of the work. One main advice is that you should definitely complete the textbook and other weightlifting work by the end of the fall semester. This means that by December, you should have gone through all of the course content. This is when you want do your first Diagnostic Test (DT), because then you will really see how much you actually know or remember from the textbook. This is important because you need to get used to completing a large number of questions under time pressure. Doing your first DT in December is really helpful for your mentality towards the AP. Even if you get a low score, you would feel that you have enough time to improve.

Developing Writing skills

APHG is a functional AP, which means that you can mostly rely on memory to do well on the exam. However, your writing still needs to be sharp and advanced. This is a college-level exam! Therefore, writing and grammar practices are important to ensure that your writing skills are strong. Even if APHG does not require sophisticated writing like AP English Language and Composition (AP Lang), having strong writing skills will leave a good impression on both AP graders. Even if College Board does not require you to include the prompt context or in-text citations, you will demonstrate proficiency by writing more than what is required. This will also prepare you for future APs and even coursework at school. 

Time management

Even though you may feel like you have a lot of time, make sure to leave yourself at least ten (10) minutes to go back and review all your previous answers. There is always the possibility that you misread a question, went off-topic, or misspelled a word. Ten (10) minutes may sound like a lot of time to set aside just for proofreading, but time goes by faster than you think during the actual exam. I would say proofreading is incredibly necessary, since you might make mistakes under the time pressure of the exam. Allocating enough time to read over your answers would take off a lot of that pressure. In the back of your mind, your brain might be focused on first completing all the questions. Proofreading serves as a safety net in case you unconsciously get tunnel vision during the test.

overcoming challenges

When I was preparing for the APHG exam, my biggest challenges were mostly not content-related. One of my main areas of focus was to familiarize myself with more countries. This helped me to diversify the examples I used in the written Section 2 free-response questions (FRQs). Additionally, I spent a lot of time remembering the rules of the exam. For example, you should not repeat your answers on the FRQs. College Board may trick you! They might give you a table and ask you multiple questions on the same graph. However, even if the questions sound similar, there should be multiple answers. Don’t ever give the same answer! College Board never wants the same answer, so if you have the same answer twice, you know one has to be changed. If the question you’re currently on only has one possible answer, go back to the previous question and change that answer. Remember, College Board has designed the exam so that you would not repeat answers.

General advice

When you are studying the APHG content, you should familiarize yourself with major themes and units such as population, culture, stages of transition, economic systems, and urban land use. Additionally, you should keep notes or make flashcards to remember the definitions and implications of key terms like cultural landscape, globalization and urbanization. Personally, I also bought a 3D globe to help me visualize various countries, capitals and geographic locations. You can also use online map games to help you remember key locations. Practice interpreting different types of maps (thematic, political, physical) to understand spatial relationships and patterns. Although College Board has a few cities that they like to use for certain topics, it’s possible for them to test you on a random country. Hence, you should do your best to be familiar with a country’s geography, languages, culture and religion. 

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