CHAPTER 3

How to Plan Your Time

IN THIS CHAPTER
Summary: What to study for the Physics C exam, plus three schedules to help you plan.

Key Ideas
Focus your attention and study time on those topics that are most likely to increase your score.
Study the topics that you’re afraid will appear, and relax about those that you’re best at.
Don’t study so widely that you don’t get good at some specific type of problem.

The AP Physics exam is held on a Monday afternoon in mid-May. You may think that you just started your
exam preparation today, when you opened this book ... but, in reality, you have been getting ready for the
AP test all year. The AP exam is an authentic test of your physics knowledge and skills. Your AP Physics
class presumably is set up to teach those skills. So, don’t give your class short shrift. Diligent attention to
your class lectures, demonstrations, and assignments can only save you preparation time in the long run.
Of course, you may not be satisfied with the quantity or quality of your in-class instruction. And even
if your class is the best in the country, you will still need a reminder of what you covered way back at the
beginning of the year. That’s where this book, and extracurricular AP exam preparation, are useful.

What Should I Study?

You will hear plenty of poorly-thought-out advice about how to deal with the vast amounts of material on
the AP Physics exams, especially if you are taking both Mechanics and E and M. Fact is, in the month or
two before the exam, you do not have enough time to re-teach yourself the entire course. So, you ask a
presumed expert, “What should I study?”

Bad Answer Number 1: “Everything.”

This logic says, every topic listed in the AP course description is guaranteed to show up somewhere on
the exam, whether in the free-response or the multiple-choice sections. So, you must study everything.
That’s ridiculous, I say to my students. You’ve been studying “everything” all year. You need to focus your
last-month study on those topics that are most likely to increase your score.