The Challenges of AP Human Geography

The Popularity of AP Human Geography

Students from all across the globe enroll in the Advanced Placement (AP) Human Geography exam because many students believe that this course is easy and a good first AP to take for underclassmen. AP Human Geography units include geographic methods, population, migration, culture, politics, agriculture, rural and urban land-use, and industrial development. Students should be careful to not underestimate the difficulty level of the Section 2 free-response questions (FRQs). Although the course concepts are not extremely challenging, applying these concepts to FRQs can present obstacles. Unit 1 on thinking geographically can be harder than anticipated. Students often neglect the importance of unit 1 concepts since they are only 8-10% of the exam. For students who are self-studying, they should start training in the summer so that they do not have to worry about learning AP Human Geography concepts in the school year, which can be stressful and time-consuming.

Important Urban Patterns

Learning the urban patterns takes a lot of time and cannot be crammed into a few weeks. The top advice for learning urban patterns is to apply them to real-world cities and the local environment that students live in so that they can increase their knowledge through application. Cities and urban land-use patterns and processes is one of the most difficult units to learn because understanding and applying the urban models are extremely difficult without practice. I learned to apply the urban models to cities around the world by doing city reconnaissance. For example, I had to research more than 50 North American cities and had to apply urban models to each city. This helped me to solidify my understanding on urban models and improved my application for FRQs. A transparent piece of advice that I would offer to students is to definitely not underestimate the difficulty of these concepts because getting comfortable can lead to panic when harder questions come up.

Advice on Must-learn Locations

I trained to learn the locations by studying the key data information for all the major countries and cities. Gaining a solid grasp of all the locations took me around three to four months of studying the country and city reconnaissance. Students should pay extra attention to the capitals of every country and to the distinctions between rural and urban areas. Furthermore, students should understand what separates developed and developing countries. I made several mistakes with learning locations. For example, I did not review locations on a consistent basis, which caused me to fall behind. This also led me to come up with a failed idea of using Quizlets to study the countries, which wasted time and caused a delay. I also created a lot of stress for myself because I did not start early enough with my AP Human Geography training.

The Key to Time Management

Time management is the most important aspect of writing FRQs because every FRQ point matters to achieve an AP 5 score . Losing points simply because of not having enough time is unfortunate because most of the time students understand the course concepts. Students should be prepared to write 20 to 21 FRQs in 75 minutes. This is around three and a half minutes per FRQ. I learned to manage time effectively with writing all the FRQs by paying attention to the clock and being conditioned through timed diagnostic tests (DTs). I recommend students writing concise and clear sentences so that they can articulate their writing with the lowest word count. Common FRQ topics include analyzing urban models, agricultural practices, economic relationships, political processes and cultural practices. Students should expect supplementary materials that display urban models, data, tables, graphs, maps and pictures.

The Sacrifices of Studying the Course

The hardest lesson that I learned was that time management is extremely important and that I should have started classes earlier. My stress level would have reduced drastically if I started classes earlier and learned all the course concepts over summer. Time management is key to achieving success in AP Human Geography. Students should stay disciplined and meet deadlines for learning the material, such as textbook readings and practice questions. Students should also be aware that proper time management for FRQs requires plenty of timed practice on DTs and homework assignments. Rushing FRQ training has several repercussions because coherent and complex writing takes time to develop with a lot of practice. Writing examples outside of my comfort zone, such as using countries and cities that are not as popular, can help further solidify understanding of the course concepts. Diversifying locations can exhibit a good impression for AP graders and can help expand personal knowledge.

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