38 ❯ STEP 3. Develop Strategies for Success
Times are given for the various tests in this book; if you try to adhere strictly to these
times, you will learn how to pace yourself automatically.- Timing is everything, kid. You have about 90 seconds for each of the 60 questions.
Keep an eye on your watch as you pass the halfway point. If you are running out
of time and you have a few questions left, skim them for the easy (and quick) ones
so that the rest of your scarce time can be devoted to those that need a little extra
reading or thought. - Think! But do not try to outthink the test. The multiple-choice questions are straight-
forward—do not over-analyze them. If you find yourself doing this, pick the simplest
answer. If you know the answer to a “difficult” question—give yourself credit for
preparing well; do not think that it is too easy and that you missed something. There
are easy questions and difficult questions on the exam. - Change is good? You should change answers only as a last resort. You can mark your
test so you can come back to a questionable problem later. When you come back to
a problem, make sure you have a definite reason for changing the answer.
Other things to keep in mind:
● Take the extra half of a second required to fill in the bubbles clearly.
● Don’t smudge anything with sloppy erasures. If your eraser is smudgy, ask the proctor
for another.
● Absolutely, positively, check that you are bubbling the same line on the answer sheet
as the question you are answering. I suggest that every time you turn the page you
double-check that you are still lined up correctly.
Free-Response Questions
You will have 105 minutes to complete Section II, the free-response part of the AP
Chemistry exam. There will be a total of seven free-response questions (FRQs) of two dif-
ferent types. Three questions will be of the long type. Plan on spending a maximum of
20–25 minutes per question on these three. You will be given some information (the ques-
tion stem), and then you will have several questions to answer related to that stem. These
questions will be, for the most part, unrelated to each other. You might have a lab question,
an equilibrium constant question, and so on. But all of these questions will be related to the
original stem. The other type of free-response question will be the short type. There will be
four of these. Plan on allowing 3–10 minutes per question.
There are a number of kinds of questions that are fair game in the free-response section
(Section II). One category is quantitative. You might be asked to analyze a graph or a set
of data, and answer questions associated with this data. In many cases you will be required
to perform appropriate calculations.
Another category of questions will be ones that refer to a laboratory setting/experiment.
These lab questions tend to fall into two types: analysis of observations/data or the design of
experiments. In the first type you might be given a set of data, for instance, kinetics data, and
then be required to determine the order of reaction and/or the rate constant using that set of
data. In the second type you might be asked to design a laboratory procedure given a set of
equipment/reagents to accomplish a certain task, such as separation of certain metal ions in a
mixture. You must use the equipment given, but you do not have to use all of the equipment.
The third category of questions on the exam involves questions related to representa-
tions of atoms or molecules. These representations might include such things as Lewis