What is This Book and When Should I Use It?

Welcome to ASAP Biology, your quick-review study guide for the AP Exam written by the Staff of The Princeton Review. This is a brand-new series custom built for crammers, visual learners, and any student doing high-level AP concept review. As you read through this book, you will notice that there aren’t any practice tests, end-of-chapter drills, or multiple-choice questions. There’s also very little test-taking strategy presented in here. Both of those things (practice and strategy) can be found in The Princeton Review’s other top-notch AP series—Cracking. So if you need a deep dive into AP Biology, check out Cracking the AP Biology Exam at your local bookstore.

ASAP Biology is our fast track to understanding the material—like a fantastic set of class notes. We present the most important information that you MUST know (or should know or could know—more on that later) in visually friendly formats such as charts, graphs, and maps, and we even threw a few jokes in there to keep things interesting.

Use this book any time you want—it’s never too late to do some studying (nor is it ever too early). It’s small, so you can take it with you anywhere and crack it open while you’re waiting for soccer practice to start or for your friend to meet you for a study date or waiting for the library to open. ASAP Biology is the perfect study guide for students who need high-level review in addition to their regular review and also for students who perhaps need to cram pre-Exam. Whatever you need it for, you’ll find no judgment here!

Who is This Book For?

This book is for YOU! No matter what kind of student you are, this book is the right one for you. How do you know what kind of student you are? Follow this handy chart to find out!

As you can see, this book is meant for every kind of student. Our quick lessons let you focus on the topics you must know, you should know, and you could know—that way, even if the test is tomorrow (!), you can get a little extra study time in, and only learn the material you need.

How Do I Use This Book?

This book is your study tool, so feel free to customize it in whatever way makes the most sense to you, given your available time to prepare. Here are some suggestions:

Why Are There Icons?

Your standard AP course is designed to be equivalent to a college-level class, and as such, the amount of material that’s covered may seem overwhelming. It’s certainly admirable to want to learn everything—these are, after all, fascinating subjects. But every student’s course load, to say nothing of his or her life, is different, and there isn’t always time to memorize every last fact.

To that end, ASAP Biology doesn’t just distill the key information into bite-sized chunks and memorable tables and figures. This book also breaks down the material into three major types of content:

– This symbol calls out a section that has MUST KNOW information. This is the core content that is either the most likely to appear in some format on the test or is foundational knowledge that’s needed to make sense of other highly tested topics.

– This symbol refers to SHOULD KNOW material. This is either content that has been tested in some form before (but not as frequently) or which will help you to deepen your understanding of the surrounding topics. If you’re pressed for time, you might just want to skim it, and read only those sections that you feel particularly unfamiliar with.

– This symbol indicates COULD KNOW material, but don’t just write it off! This material is still within the AP’s expansive curriculum, so if you’re aiming for a perfect 5, you’ll still want to know all of this. That said, this is the information that is least likely to be directly tested, so if the test is just around the corner, you should probably save this material for last.

As you work through the book, you’ll also notice a few other types of icons.