Best review book for AP Biology?

What's the best review book for an AP Biology exam?

• Answer:

  When I've polled my AP Bio students, the two books that get the most thumbs up are the Cliff Notes and Princeton Review books. Much of the difference I think is due to personal preference, so I'd recommend seeing if you can borrow other people's and read a couple comparable sections to see which best suits your particular learning style. If you know someone from last year's class, you might be able to get their book for cheap/free. Even if it's a year or two old, there's not been any significant change (yet) in the content of the test. The only significant change over the last few years has been a reduction in the number of questions in the Multiple Choice section (from 120-100), 10 more minutes added to the essay section just for reading the questions (I suspect because students did so poorly on them). About 2 years ago, they also changed the scoring so that 50% of the students who take the test pass instead of 60% (I suspect due to the increase in the number of people taking the test, many of whom are poorly prepared for the test, so they didn't want the scores diluted). Another option is a review website. My students really like the lectures done by the guy at http://www.brightstorm.com/ap/ap-biology The guy does a good job of covering the hardest to understand topics and/or the most commonly asked about topics on the AP exam, with an emphasis on the kinds of things they tend to ask questions on. He continually highlights how to score an extra point or two on essay questions, which is typically students' weakest area. I've actually used a number of the bonus materials provided as handouts in my classroom. There's a free sample of one of the lectures, you can watch it and decide whether or not it would be helpful for you. I've not seen any other for-pay sites I'd recommend. While I've seen a variety of lectures for free on AP Bio topics on Youtube, it's hard to filter out the good ones from the "not-so-good" (to put it politely), a case of "you get what you pay for."