The decision to take a challenging course in high school can be intimidating for some students. Sure, taking challenging courses will make your transcript look better to colleges but, if the courses are too challenging, you may find yourself struggling to keep up your GPA. AP® Biology is a challenging course, but how challenging is it? In this article, we will answer that question. To begin, we will review the scores that other students received in the past years. We then will talk about the content of the course and the exam, the structure of the exam, and the skills required to be successful. Finally, we will talk about the next steps you should take if you decide to take AP® Biology.

By the Numbers

To begin, we will review the success of past AP® Biology students. You must first know how the AP® exam will be scored.

Every AP® exam is scored on the following 5 point scale:

• Score of 1: No Recommendation
• Score of 2: Possibly Qualified
• Score of 3: Qualified
• Score of 4: Well Qualified
• Score of 5: Extremely Well Qualified

The majority of colleges will require a student to earn a minimum score of a 3 or 4, in order to receive course credit. Each college requires a different score for each exam, so if you have a particular school that you are looking at, check out their website for more information. What are your chances of passing the AP® Biology exam? Let’s look at the score distribution for students who took the 2015 AP® Bio exam.

In 2015, a total of 223,479 high school students took the AP® Biology exam. Of those students, 64.3% of students were able to earn a score of 3 or higher; 6.4% of students earned a 5, 22.1% of students earned a 4, and 35.9% of students earned a 3. The mean score that was earned was a 2.91.

You should not be discouraged by these numbers. The AP® exam is not like playing the lottery; your score will not be randomly given to you. The amount of work that you put into your AP® Biology course will be mirrored by the score that you receive on your AP® exam. Let’s look at the content that you will have to be responsible for if you choose to take AP® Biology.

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AP® Biology Content

Arguably, the most important part in your decision to take a course is based on the content that will be featured in the course. The AP® Biology exam attempts to educate students by using an inquiry-based learning approach. This approach means that your teachers will expect you to learn content, and then use that content to create scientific inquiries and understand experimental data. The AP® Biology exam of the past focused more on content recall, but changes in the AP® Biology curriculum allows students to focus more on how they can use their knowledge to solve problems. Because of this new focus, students should develop advanced inquiry and reasoning skills. You will see questions on the AP® Biology exam that present data and ask you to explain the phenomenon. You could also be asked how you could test a certain hypothesis using the content that you have learned during the course.

Though the AP® Biology curriculum has shifted, you should not imagine a course without memorization. In order to be able to ask biological questions, a foundation of knowledge must be attained through memorization. You will be required to memorize and understand a host of information. You will demonstrate your knowledge of this information on the exam through recall questions. We will go over the types of questions later in our exam structure section.

The content that you will be held responsible for covers a broad range of topics. In AP® Biology, you will learn about biology from the molecular level to the ecological level. Each of these topics will fall into one or more of the “Big Ideas” in the CollegeBoard curriculum. The Big Ideas that CollegeBoard has created are as follows:

• Big Idea 1: The process of evolution drives the diversity and unity of life.
• Big Idea 2: Biological systems utilize free energy and molecular building blocks to grow, to reproduce and to maintain dynamic homeostasis.
• Big Idea 3: Living systems store, retrieve, transmit, and respond to information essential to life processes.
• Big Idea 4: Biological systems interact, and these systems and their interactions possess complex properties.

These Big Ideas may seem vague, but they will be the categories that each specific piece of knowledge that you learn in AP® Bio will fall into.

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Investigative Labs

Unlike other courses, science courses require students spend time in the lab. Students will not only learn content during lab time, but they will be able to demonstrate things that they have learned during lecture in their labs. AP® Biology will devote laboratory time to student led investigations.The Big Ideas, which CollegeBoard wants every AP® Biology student to learn, will be the focus of the laboratories. Additionally, students will be tested on the framework of 13 labs on the AP® Biology exam. It is very important for students to keep detailed notebooks during their investigations so that the labs can be referenced during studying for the exam.

The basic framework of 13 labs that students could be asked about on the AP® Biology exam can be found on CollegeBoard. Though you may be tested on these 13 labs, the way in which your teacher presents the labs is up to their discretion. Your teacher may make the lab time more student led by changing certain parts of the labs. You should review the published laboratory material in order to be familiar with what you could be tested on.

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AP® Biology Exam Structure: Part One

Each AP® Exam has a different structure that best fits the course. The AP® Biology exam is composed of two different sections. The first section is multiple choice and grid-in questions.

The first section will be completed in 90 minutes and is broken down into two parts. Part A will consist of 63 multiple choice questions. These questions will be focused on both the recall of facts from the curriculum and higher level reasoning. Part B features six grid-in questions. The grid-in questions are mathematically based and will require students to calculate the correct answer and enter it into a grid, meaning there will not be multiple choices. The first section of the AP® Biology exam accounts for 50% of the total score.

The grid-in questions have been the most difficult for AP® Biology students of the past. In 2013, only 35% of students were able to successfully answer the quantitative questions. A best practice in test taking is to pass on questions that you don’t know the answer to immediately, and return to them last. This will give you more time to focus on questions that you could earn full points on, and will also give you a boost in confidence for facing the more difficult questions.

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AP® Biology Exam Structure: Part Two

After completion of part one, you will move onto the second part of the exam. The second section of the exam will also take 90 minutes. The first ten minutes of the second section will be a reading period. During this period, you should read through the questions carefully and begin to plan how you will answer each question. You will then have 80 minutes to complete each of the eight questions.

The second section of the exam is also broken down into long free-response questions and short free response questions. The longer questions should take you about 20-25 minutes to answer, and the short questions will only take about 3-10 minutes. There will be six short response questions, worth 25% of your final score and two long response questions worth 25% of your final score.

As you can see by the structure, you must be able to budget your time in order to complete the AP® Biology exam. To learn how to budget your time, you should expect to practice full length exams, where you time yourself, during your preparation.

It is also essential to develop a strategy when it comes to answering questions. Some students may want to finish the longer free response questions first, while others may want to quickly finish the shorter free response questions and use the remaining time to answer the long free response questions. You should keep in mind that the longer free response questions will be worth the most points per question so you will definitely want your best work to be there. Again, if you do not know the answer to a question pass by it and return to it later. Not only will you gain confidence by finishing the other questions, but you will also be able to give the most effort to the questions that you are sure about.

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Skills Required for AP® Biology

In order for you to be successful in AP® Biology, there are some skills that you should have gained through your other high school science courses. The AP® Biology course is often offered to high school Juniors and Seniors because students must have a foundation in science to successfully learn at the AP® level.

In order to be successful, you must understand scientific questions and predictions, how to collect data in order to test your predictions, how to analyze your data for patterns, and how to explain the patterns of your data. Essentially, during your high school career, you should have gained experience in the scientific method. The scientific method will be used in every laboratory that you conduct in AP® Biology.

You must also have a foundation in life science. In order to build up the more advanced topics of AP® Biology, it is necessary to enter AP® Biology with a working knowledge of evolution, cells, interdependent biological systems, how living systems utilize energy, and how living systems store, retrieve and transmit information.

If you are worried that you may not have the skills necessary to succeed, you can find a more detailed list of the information you should know prior to beginning AP® Biology from CollegeBoard. If you find that you are lacking background in these topics, you can spend time studying. If there are too many topics for you to study independently, look into taking a few more high school science courses before attempting to take AP® Biology.

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Is AP® Biology Worth It?

From what we have reviewed so far, AP® Biology might sound intimidating. We will now go over the benefits that you can expect from taking AP® Bio. First and foremost, if you enjoy the biological sciences, you will enjoy this course. It will be difficult, and you will spend a lot of time preparing; however, if you enjoy what you are learning that will make the whole experience worth it!

You can also get a taste of what studying biology in college would be like! If you are interested in studying biology or the natural sciences in college, this course will also serve as an introduction to what you can expect in college. Instead of wasting your time figuring out that you either love or hate biology in college, you can figure it out now!

Additionally, the AP® Biology course is the equivalent of a two-semester college introductory biology course. Of course that might sound intimidating, but that also means that by passing the AP® Biology exam you will have earned college credit! Not only does the successful completion of this course mean that you will save time during your college career- but also money.

Lastly, even if you do not earn a score that will count towards college credit, you will have accomplished a great feat. AP® courses are not easy, and you should be proud of yourself for making it through the course. Colleges know that AP® Courses are challenging and that when you take an AP® Course you have chosen to challenge yourself. The more AP® Courses that you take while in high school, the more challenging your transcript will be when you apply to colleges.

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Next Steps

The first step you should take is to figure out if your high school offers AP® Biology. AP® Biology is a commonly offered course, and most students will be offered it at their high school. If you are not, that does not mean that you have to miss out! You must schedule an appointment with your guidance counselor or principal to talk about different ways that you could participate in AP® Biology. Perhaps your school would allow you to take it online (see: Virtual High School), or maybe you could begin an individual study with a teacher. Either way, don’t give up if AP® Biology isn’t in your school’s course catalog.

If your school does offer AP® Biology, and you want to take it, sign up! After you are all signed up, ask your teacher what topics she will begin with, so that you can begin reviewing. The course will move quickly and it will be in your best interest to be ahead of the lectures, rather than behind.

Once you know what topics to begin reviewing, find our corresponding articles. We work hard to bring you detailed and understandable articles about the hardest to understand AP® Biology topics. If you are having trouble getting started, a lot of teachers begin with the Animal Behavior unit. Read through our article Animal Behavior: AP® Biology Crash Course.

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Summary

Overall, it is your choice whether you decide to partake in AP® Biology. The course will challenge you, and you will learn a lot about the biological sciences. AP® courses were created to give high school students the chance to experience college level classes. If you would like to challenge yourself, we at Albert.io will be here to help you along the way!

Thanks for reading! Let us know what you decide to do, and how we can help you!

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