Cracking the AP World History Exam, 2010 Edition (College Test Preparation)

Comment: I used this book by Princeton Review to help me prepare for the AP World History exam. I read through the entire review (very carefully) and even took notes on what I read. I read through the essay strategies as well and studied the essay grading rubric.

Before taking the exam, I thought that the review was very good. It contained a lot of information and was very well organized. I learned a good deal of history from it.

So, I took the AP World History exam and I thought it was somewhat difficult, especially the multiple choice portion. The multiple choice questions were much more detailed than what this book covered. In fact, this book had a lot of extraneous information that didn't even appear on the test. This book hardly touched upon the important information. Not to mention that the practice exams were nothing like the actual exam. The questions on the practice exams were more objective-based and much easier.

What score did I receive on the AP World History test? 2!!! And I'm upset about it! Before anybody asks, I'm not an idiot nor am I a bad test taker. I have straight A's, I am ranked top 1% in terms of GPA in a fairly large class at a public high school, and I passed all of my other AP exams (I didn't use Princeton Review to study for those exams).

Conclusion: This Princeton Review book does not adequately prepare you for the AP World History exam. I wasted a lot of time reading this book, and did not receive a passing score. This book is good for history reading, but definitely not good for the AP exam.

Comment: My 15 year old daughter, a sophomore in high school, asked me to purchase this book for her at the suggestion of her AP World History teacher in order to prepare for the AP World History exam. We have not received results back from the exam yet, but she said that it was immensely helpful and the best part was that it was easy to follow. She commented several times that she wished her AP World History textbook was written like this guide, she probably would have retained more information throughout the year. Her textbook was written so poorly, I still would like to know who approved such a disaster of a collection of twisted facts.

This coming school year, she will be in AP US History, and I will purchase that version of this book at the beginning of the school year!

Comment: The Princeton review for the World History AP exam is the best in my opinion. This is the reason that I was able to score a 4 on the exam last year. To be honest I did not pay attention in class most of the year so by the time that there was a week left for the exam I picked up this book and read it at lightning speed. It's very easy to read and grasp big concepts. The mock tests in the back are also very close to the actual exam. At first I had tried the Barron's book but that didn't work because it was too long and I did not have enough time to read the whole book.The Princeton review is perfect because it gets to the point and doesn't give you any unnecessary information.

Comment: Good review on history and how to take the test. Practice test with answers and their explanations were very helpful. Hint: dont spend too much time studying random facts because the test is mainly on larger ideas such as religion and government; I wasted a lot of time momerizing useless info. Good luck on the test and remember DONT STRESS BOUT IT!!!

Comment: I just took the AP World History Exam 2010 today and I believe I did great :) (maybe it was because the essays, luckily, were very general and easy in my opinion).

Anyway, this review book was a life saver. My teacher gave us a lot of busy work throughout the year and ended up not finishing the textbook, leaving the class uneducated on a lot of important topics. A few nights before the exam I began reading the Princeton 2010 Review. I loved it!

The review book is written in a very conversational manner with a few jokes put in (ex: If Access Hollywood was around at this time, they'd be all over Mansa Musa ...or something). Sometimes their jokes made me laugh, an odd behavior for a kid cramming for a test. This book goes into a lot of detail, which at times was stressful because I just couldn't handle remembering so many important figures, yet the book seemed to know what I was going through. At one point the book said something along the lines of: If you're confused, you should be. Which I laughed at because that was exactly the case, but the Princeton Review explained everything in a simple manner that was not at all boring compared to my World History textbook that I've been dealing with all year.

The only problem is it's lack of sample questions after each unit, which I would have preferred. Also, there were not enough maps to help me understand WHERE events were happening. When they did have maps, they were quite vague. But all in all, without this review book I would have failed the exam. Pay attention to the detail because it could give away the answer to four or five tricky AP questions! I recommend this review book, it's conversational, not boring style of writing makes it interesting to learn. You'll enjoy learning from this book!

-Good luck :)