AP courses cover a lot of complex information, and it's not always easy to find great study materials and strategies. I've written this AP Psychology study guide as a way to make the process of studying for the AP test and other in-class assessments a little less overwhelming. It will help you figure out how to structure your studying, give you strategies to better understand the material, and provide links to notes and practice resources. If you follow the advice in this guide, you'll be on your way to a high AP Psych score!
What's in This AP Psychology Study Guide?
This guide will help you study for the AP Psychology exam and other assessments in your class by providing study strategies and other resources that pertain to the material covered in the course.
In the first section, you'll learn how to create a study plan for the exam that supports your needs as a student. This section applies exclusively to the final AP exam, so it's less relevant if you're just studying for an in-class test.
The next section provides study tips that are specific to AP Psychology and will serve you well as you prepare for both in-class tests and the final exam.
Finally, the last part of this AP Psychology guide is devoted to notes, outlines, videos, and other online resources that will be useful in your studying.
AP Psychology Study Plans: 2 Options for Your Prep
Before you start studying for AP Psych, you should know the difference between where you are in your knowledge of the material and where you want to be.
Find an official practice test, print it out, and take it as though it were the real AP Psych test (70 minutes for the 100 multiple-choice questions and 50 minutes for the two free-response questions). Then, use the following chart to estimate your final AP score based on your raw scores:
| Raw Composite Score | AP Score |
| 113-150 | 5 |
| 93-112 | 4 |
| 77-92 | 3 |
| 65-76 | 2 |
| 0-64 | 1 |
To calculate your final score, you must first add up all the multiple-choice questions you answered correctly (each question is worth 1 point). Next, convert the number of points you earned on the free-response questions to a value out of 50. For example, if you got 8 out of 14 points on the two free-response questions (each question is worth 7 points), it would convert to about 29 out of 50.
Lastly, add your multiple-choice score (out of 100) and your free-response score (out of 50) to find your composite raw AP Psychology score (out of 150). Use the chart above to see the estimate for your final AP score on a scale of 1-5.
Depending on how much you need to improve and the amount of time you have before the exam, you might choose to structure your studying in different ways. I'll go through a 10-hour plan and a 20-hour plan. The shorter plan is for students hoping to improve by just a single AP point or raise their score within the same AP range so that they feel more comfortable during the test. The longer plan is for students hoping to improve by 2 or more points (and can be extended further if necessary).
I know this doesn't seem like much time, but a few hours of focused studying goes a long way for this particular subject. Psychology is one of the shorter AP tests (just two hours in total), so practice testing won't be as long of a process.
Additionally, questions tend to be based on memorization of definitions of terms and some logical reasoning; there aren't as many complex thought processes involved. Overall, AP Psychology is considered one of the easier AP tests. Most students will probably be able to earn a high score (4 or 5) by studying for 10 hours or less.
Option 1: 10-Hour AP Psychology Study Plan
- Take a diagnostic test (2 hours)
- Score the test and analyze your mistakes (1.5 hours)
- Study content and revise your strategy, keeping in mind your mistakes on the diagnostic test (2 hours)
- Take another practice test (2 hours)
- Score the test and analyze your mistakes (1.5 hours)
- Final study session to clear up any issues you had on the second test (1 hour)
Option 2: 20-Hour AP Psychology Study Plan
- Take a diagnostic test (2 hours)
- Score the test and analyze your mistakes (1.5 hours)
- Study content and revise your strategy, keeping in mind your mistakes on the diagnostic test (3 hours)
- Take another practice test (2 hours)
- Score the test and analyze your mistakes (1.5 hours)
- Study content areas for which you're still missing questions, do more practice questions, and continue to revise your strategy (3 hours)
- Take a third practice test (2 hours)
- Score the test and analyze your mistakes (1.5 hours)
- Final study session to clear up any confusion (1.5 hours)
- Wrap up your studying with a final practice test (2 hours)
Each of these psychology study plans has the same basic components, but the second one allows you to spend more time studying content and has more room for additional practice tests. If you're trying to improve by 2 or more AP points, it's likely that there are some major gaps in your content knowledge that warrant additional studying.
It's extremely important that you document and analyze your mistakes on each AP practice test if you're hoping to make big improvements. Mistakes come in several different forms, and you should be aware of this so that you can make appropriate changes to your test-taking strategy and study plan after each practice test.
If most of your incorrect answers are the results of careless mistakes or poor time management, the solution to your problem isn't necessarily more content review. These types of mistakes respond better to additional practice testing that increases your familiarity with time limits and question formats.
If, on the other hand, you find that all or most of your incorrect answers are due to gaps in content knowledge, you can use this info to focus your studying on the areas that cost you the most points. I suggest categorizing your mistakes so that you know where to direct your studying. In this case, you might not need to make many modifications to your actual test-taking strategy.
Most students will have a mixture of both types of mistakes, but it's still good to be mindful of where your biggest problems lie so that you can tackle them more efficiently.
Writing down your study plan or scheduling it in a planner will help you stay on task. Yesssss. Become one with the stock photo.
AP Psychology Exam: 4 Essential Study Tips
Before you start studying content for AP Psychology, I want to give you a few studying and test-taking tips that will help you get the most out of your time. Here are some pointers to keep in mind when preparing for the AP test and any other in-class assessments throughout the year.
Tip 1: Get Familiar With Important Terms
You'll need to have extensive knowledge of the definitions of psychological terms for both the multiple-choice and free-response sections of the test. Some definitions are relatively intuitive, but others are almost impossible to figure out if you haven't studied them directly.
Be meticulous about going over all the terms covered in your class so that you don't second-guess yourself on the test. This is especially important for free-response questions for which you will be asked to describe how terms relate to certain situations. You need to understand them beyond just the ability to pick their correct definitions out of a multiple-choice lineup. Flashcards are a particularly useful study tool for AP Psychology.
Tip 2: Make the Abstract Concrete
With all the confusing terminology involved in this course, it's easy to get mixed up and think that a term means one thing when it really means another. Since psychology deals with how people act and process information on a day-to-day basis, it's a great idea to connect terms to specific scenarios in your life.
For example, you might connect a term such as "reciprocity norm," which says that people tend to treat others the same way they have been treated, to a situation in which a store employee was rude to you. Maybe they received poor treatment from other customers and were reflecting that back onto you (they also could just be a jerk, but it's nice to give people the benefit of the doubt).
When you make this type of connection, the term becomes stickier in your memory because it's tied to the heavy weight of a real-life experience. You can practice applying psychology terms to your everyday life at any time as the concepts are constantly demonstrated all around us.
I don't mean that you should literally make things concrete. However, even this picture could be relevant because it looks like a scene from some sort of serial killer horror movie. You can use it to remember Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Tip 3: Think Logically
Remember to listen to your common sense when answering questions on the AP Psych test. In some cases on the exam, you can figure out the answer with nothing but a little bit of logic. It's common for students to forget this and start to worry when they don't know what every part of the question means.
In this case, take a step back and think about which answer makes the most sense based on what you do know. You might be surprised by how many questions you can answer this way!
Here's an example (which I used in my AP Psychology review article as well) of what I mean:
There are a few complex terms here and the question might seem pretty wordy, but it's actually very basic.
When they were scared, the monkeys preferred the soft cloth mother over the uncomfortable wire mother with food. Logically, we can conclude that the answer is B. Overthinking is the downfall of many high-achieving students, so don't start to doubt yourself just because the answer seems too simple to you!
Tip 4: Write in Complete Sentences, not Complete Essays
Although this isn't really a study tip, I think it's important to know before the exam; it probably also applies to in-class tests.
Psychology is about your grasp of science—not English—so don't bother with introductions, conclusions, or any other fluff in your answers to the free-response questions. All you need to do is give a direct answer in a complete sentence. You'll save time and make it easier for the graders to give you points.
It's smart to get used to doing this on practice free-response questions so that you'll be a pro by exam time.
Get to the point(s).
AP Psychology Content: Notes, Outlines, and Videos
Here are some helpful resources that cover all the content you'll see on the AP Psychology exam. (Note that these are not the same as the new units described in the 2020 Course and Exam Description, though they cover similar topics and ideas.) Depending on your learning style, you might decide to look at notes or follow along with a video in areas for which your understanding is weaker.
You can also use these resources throughout the year to review for in-class assessments. If you had difficulty understanding a concept as it was taught to you in class, for example, you might use the notes and videos in this article to access alternative explanations.
You could also use these AP Psychology notes to supplement your studying if you found that you were consistently coming up with incorrect answers to questions in a certain topic area on quizzes or practice tests.
History and Approaches
Research Methods
Biological Bases of Behavior
- WikiNotes
- PowerPoint
- Video
Sensation and Perception
States of Consciousness
Learning
Cognition
Motivation and Emotion
Developmental Psychology
Personality
Testing and Individual Differences
Abnormal Psychology
Treatment of Psychological Disorders
Social Psychology
Overall Review
The way your brain works is a puzzle, but you can solve it with the magic of psychology! ISN'T LEARNING FUN?
Additional Resources to Test Your AP Psychology Knowledge
If you're unsure of where to start with your AP Psych prep or prefer to learn in a more interactive way, here are some additional online resources for reviewing concepts and taking practice tests.
The College Board
It's best to prioritize official resources over unofficial ones, as these will be the most accurate. Here are some great College Board materials you can use in your AP Psychology prep.
- The College Board website: You get access to tons of free-response questions, along with answer guides and sample responses, from 1999 to 2021. You can also get more practice questions through AP Classroom, a new digital tool that your AP teacher can use to assign homework and give out questions to students.
- 2020 AP Psychology Course and Exam Description: This free guide offers 15 multiple-choice questions, two free-response questions, and answer explanations for both (you can see free-response answers in the scoring guidelines). All information has been updated for the current exam format and content.
- 2014-15 AP Psychology Course Description: This older but still relevant guide contains 25 multiple-choice questions (with answers) and two free-response questions.
- Official full-length practice tests: These practice tests are the best you can get and should be used throughout your prep to gauge your progress. There are three practice tests you can access for free as PDFs:
Albert.io
This site includes practice questions that cover all the current topics in AP Psychology. It divides them into easy, medium, and hard difficulty levels and records how many questions within each level you've answered correctly. This makes it simple to gauge which areas need the most work. You'll need to create and pay for an account to access most of the questions.
Quizlet
This popular quiz website offers a bunch of flashcards with AP Psych terms to help you practice, including a strong set of flashcards based on the Myers textbook and a set that goes through all the famous psychologists you should know.
Varsity Tutors
Famed test-prep company Varsity Tutors has several multiple-choice diagnostic tests to help you get a feel for how much you already know about AP Psych. It also has a bunch of mini quizzes organized by topic area and labeled based on difficulty level. Flashcards for AP Psychology terms and concepts are included here as well.
High School Test Prep
This site has lots of free practice AP Psych tests organized by topic area. You'll get immediate feedback with detailed answer explanations as you go along.
A whole internet's worth of AP Psychology practice resources are at your poorly Photoshopped fingertips!
Conclusion: Using This AP Psychology Study Guide
Following the advice in this study guide is a promising step toward earning a high score on the AP Psychology test and other psychology tests throughout the school year.
AP Psychology is a completely manageable subject if you prepare for the exam responsibly. Memorizing key terms, applying confusing psychology concepts to your everyday life, using common sense to solve practice questions, and staying focused on the free-response section will help you be successful, both in class and on the AP test.
After reading this article, you should have everything you need to be able to answer even the most challenging questions the College Board throws at you on the AP Psych exam!
What's Next?
For more info on how to prepare for the AP Psychology exam, check out my comprehensive review guide.
Are you looking for some review books to supplement your AP studying? Read about the best review books for AP Psychology. You can also try our articles on specific psychology topics, like this one about Stockholm Syndrome.
Still trying to decide how many AP classes you should take in high school? Then you'll definitely want to read this article for some advice!
