They loom.

  Creaking and shrieking, the monolithic exams bring the students to the nexus of their shadow. This is it. These are the Big Ones, the tests they’ve worked for and stressed about for the last seven months.

  For those who don’t play the AP game, students spend seven months under a rigorous curriculum designed to prepare them for a test on a specific discipline which is uniform across the nation. The test is hard enough to challenge a nation of students who have all been cramming for the past several months.

  Difficulties vary from test to test. Students taking the AP Calculus and AP Human Geo tests regularly pass with flying colors. How does Susquehannock score so high on the bell curve? JC Lewis, who teaches the AP Calculus course, and Matt Amberman, who teaches the Human Geo, have specific strategies.

  “I prep them all year-long,” says Amberman. “All our tests are cumulative…. [Also] my tests are typically harder than the AP tests, so when they actually take the AP test, it doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “We covered the entire school year’s worth of curriculum by February. We reviewed it then, in-depth, [and] we took multiple practice AP tests,” Lewis explained.

  But no AP test has ever been easy. These three-hour endeavors contain multiple five-paragraph essay prompts and armies of five-option multiple-choice questions and tend to cover such a wide range of topics that a testee can get intellectual whiplash from skimming them over.

  Each AP test comes back with a grade of 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1. Most testees get 3’s, which counts for partial credit; the best and brightest get a 5, or full credit. No cutesy pluses or minuses or decimal percentages mark this grade; the student either spent his $89 wisely, or did not.

  The week leading up to the AP test depending on the test  is the most terrifying, with students scrambling to practice one last time. Junior Zach Shelley, who has taken four AP tests this year and scored a 5 on the AP History test last year, has some words – perhaps not of wisdom, but of explanation on how he got that 5:

  “I have a couple of AP Study books and I go over them,” Shelley says, but “a lot of hoping, stressing, and eating chocolate is involved.”

  When the AP test occurs and passes, some students will pass and some won’t – the mathematics of the AP board demands it be so. However, everyone will get a huge weight off their shoulders when it is finished. Best of luck to the students aiming for the 5.