Book Preface

Congratulations—you have chosen Kaplan to help you get a top score on your AP U.S. History exam. Kaplan understands your goals and what you’re up against: conquering a tough exam while participating in everything else that high school has to offer.

You expect realistic practice, authoritative advice, and accurate, up-to-the-minute information on the exam. And that’s exactly what you’ll find in this book.

In preparing for the AP exam, you certainly will have built a solid foundation of U.S. history knowledge. While this knowledge is critical to your learning, keep in mind that just being able to recall isolated facts, dates, and events does not ensure success on the exam. U.S. history is about big ideas, such as: how America became a country; how various regions have developed distinct identities; how economics, politics, and social structures have developed; how the United States interacts with the rest of world. The College Board (the maker of the AP exam) asks you to apply the knowledge you’ve learned at a higher level in order to show evidence of college-level abilities.

That’s where this book comes in. This guide offers much more than a review of basic content. We’ll show you how to put your knowledge to brilliant use on the AP exam through structured practice and efficient review of the areas you need to work on most. We’ll explain the ins and outs of the exam structure and question formats so you won’t experience any surprises. We’ll even give you test-taking strategies that successful students use to earn high scores.

Are you ready for your adventure in the study and mastery of everything AP U.S. History? Good luck!

How to Get the Most Out of This Book

Kaplan’s AP U.S. History Prep Plus contains precisely what you’ll need to get the score you want in the time you have to study. The unique format of this book allows you to customize your prep experience to make the most of your time.

Start by going to kaptest.com/moreonline to register your book and get a glimpse of the additional online resources available to you.

Book Features

Specific Strategies

This chapter features both general test-taking strategies and strategies tailored specifically to the AP U.S. History exam. You’ll learn about the types of questions you’ll see on the official exam and how to best approach them to achieve a top score.

Customizable Study Plans

We recognize that every student is a unique individual, and there is no single recipe for success that works for everyone. To give you the best chance to succeed, we have developed three customizable study plans. Each offers guidance on how to make the most of your available study time. In addition, we have split this book into “Rapid Review and Practice” and “Comprehensive Review” sections for each historical period. There is guidance in both the study plans and the Rapid Review sections to help you determine how to best move through this book and optimize your study time.

Rapid Review

Chapters 3–11 aim to cover the most high-yield content in the shortest amount of time. Each Rapid Review and Practice chapter begins with a “Test What You Already Know” section containing a multiple-choice quiz and a checklist of key terms; this combination allows you to see where you stand with this historical period before you even begin studying the content. The “Next Steps” chart (example shown below) will guide you in customizing your further study.  In the middle of the Rapid Review chapter, the section entitled “Essential Content” contains a summary of key takeaways and a complete list of definitions for all of the key terms. Finally, the “Test What You Learned” section contains another multiple-choice quiz and the same key terms checklist so you can see how you’re doing after some studying.

Comprehensive Review

Chapters 12–20 feature the same time periods as the Rapid Review and Practice chapters, but they offer a more detailed look at all of the important topics tested on the AP exam. You’ll be directed to these Comprehensive Review chapters, for studying the High-Yield topics or for reading the complete chapter, based on your results in the corresponding Rapid Review chapter.

The Comprehensive Review chapters are like an abbreviated version of a textbook you would use in class. The key terms in bold are the same (and appear in the same order) as the terms in the Rapid Review and Practice chapters. Chapter 21 is an in-depth review of the free-response section of the exam, including sample essays and grading rubrics. High-Yield icons appear throughout the Comprehensive Review chapters to help you recognize when information is absolutely essential to know. You will also see AP Expert Notes that highlight important connections between topics and provide tips about how to better apply your knowledge on the official exam.

Full-Length Practice Exams

In addition to all of the exam-like practice questions featured in the chapter quizzes, we have provided three full-length practice exams. These full-length exams mimic the multiple-choice and free-response questions on the real AP exam. Taking a practice full-length gives you an idea of what it’s like to answer exam-like questions for about three hours. Granted, that’s not exactly a fun experience, but it is a helpful one. And the best part is that it doesn’t count; mistakes you make on our practice exams are mistakes you won’t make on your real exam.

After taking each practice exam, you’ll score your multiple-choice and free-response sections using the answers and explanations. Then, you’ll navigate to the scoring section in your online resources and input your raw scores to see what your overall score would be with a similar performance on the official exam.

Online Quizzes

While this book contains dozens of exam-like multiple-choice questions, you may still find yourself wanting additional practice on particular topics. That’s what the online quizzes are for! Your online resources contain additional quizzes for each historical period. Go to kaptest.com/moreonline to find them all.