Forget everything your teachers have told you and stop studying right now for your Advanced Placement (AP) exam. If you really want to succeed this year on your test, throw away your flashcards, review packets, and notebooks.
Late-night study sessions won’t prepare you nearly as well as building up your stamina to sit still and stay focused for hours. First, practice by sitting at a desk without moving for three hours straight.
Ignore your hunger or any distractions, and don’t even think about getting up to go to the bathroom. After all, when the exam begins, it will be your endurance that carries you through when your brain starts to fog after an hour.Â
According to Kaplan Test Prep, it is recommended to study anywhere between 15 and 40 hours for each AP test. Yet, after countless hours of studying, the pressure and length of the exam get to many students, causing them to do worse on the actual day and making sleepless nights feel wasted.
For example, in 2025, 28.1% of students who took an AP test scored below three, meaning they wouldn’t earn college credit.Â
So, what is the point of studying for hours on end when you know many students, including you, may not receive any credit for the test? That is exactly why, if you are taking an AP class and want to get a four or five, you need to see through the propaganda and realize that the system only rewards those who have the endurance to sit still and focus for three hours or more.Â
If you really want a challenge during your preparation, set your alarm for 3 a.m. and practice writing an essay as quickly as you can while sleep-deprived and groggy. It will be the perfect preparation, especially if you have an 8 a.m. exam where you crammed all night before.
Further, stress plays an important role during the test, and the prospect of such an important exam can invoke a lot of nerves for many students. During these stressful times, a person’s heart rate often exceeds 100 beats per minute, similar to that of a person jogging.
Therefore, for the weeks leading up to the exam, to get comfortable with a high heart rate, you should go out on a 20-minute jog every day. It will help ensure that you can endure the stressful environment as well as possible.
But unfortunately, despite the various aspects that come with taking an AP exam, many students continue to spend weeks cramming information into their brains and completely overlook the endurance required to take such a long and demanding test.
The system remains prevalent: prepare for weeks beforehand and burn away all your academic motivation so that you can get a five on your exam. Anyone who doesn’t succeed with this style of learning doesn’t matter and can be left to fail.
