Not too long ago, you agreed to enroll in AP Macroeconomics. Maybe you saw a flyer and the allure of economic knowledge was just too much to resist, or maybe a respected teacher encouraged you to challenge yourself and you took the bait. Either way, you find yourself here, flipping through a book that promises to help you culminate this life-changing experience with the highest of honors, a 5 in AP Macroeconomics. Can it be done without this book? Sure, there are many excellent teachers of AP Macroeconomics out there who teach, coax, and cajole their students into a 5 every year. But for the majority of students in your shoes, the marginal benefits of buying this book far outweigh the marginal costs.
This book is organized as a five-step program to prepare you for success on the exams. These steps are designed to provide you with the skills and strategies vital to the exam and the practice that can lead you to that perfect 5. Each of the five steps provides you with the opportunity to get closer and closer to that prize trophy 5.
Following are the five steps:
In this step you’ll read a brief overview of the AP Macroeconomics exam, including an outline of topics and the approximate percentage of the exam that will test knowledge of each topic. You will also follow a process to help determine which of the following preparation programs is right for you:
• Full school year: September through May.
• One semester: January through May.
• Six weeks: Basic training for the exam.
In this step you’ll take a diagnostic exam in macroeconomics. This pretest should give you an idea of how prepared you are to take the real exam before beginning to study for it.
• Go through the diagnostic exam step-by-step and question-by-question to build your confidence level.
• Review the correct answers and explanations so that you see what you do and do not yet fully understand.
In this step you’ll learn strategies to help you do your best on the exam. These strategies cover both the multiple-choice and free-response sections of the exam. Some of these tips are based upon my understanding of how the questions are designed, and others have been gleaned from my years of experience reading (grading) the AP exams.
• Learn to read multiple-choice questions.
• Learn how to answer multiple-choice questions, including whether or not to guess.
• Learn how to plan and write the free-response questions.
In this step you’ll review the material you need to know for the test. This review section takes up the bulk of this book. It contains a comprehensive review of macroeconomics.
There is a lot of material here, enough to summarize a yearlong experience in AP Macroeconomics and highlight the, well, highlights. Some AP courses will have covered more material than yours; some will have covered less. The bottom line is that if you thoroughly review this material, you will have studied all that is tested on the exam, and you will significantly increase your chances of scoring well. This edition gives new emphasis to some areas of macroeconomics to bring your review more in line with recent exams. For example, there is more coverage of how the economy can adjust from the short run to the long run in the macroeconomics review.
In this step you’ll complete your preparation by testing yourself on practice exams. This section contains two complete exams in macroeconomics, solutions, and, sometimes more importantly, advice on how to avoid the common mistakes. Be aware that these practice exams are not reproduced questions from actual AP Macroeconomics exams, but they mirror both the material tested by AP and the way in which it is tested.
Lastly, at the back of this book you’ll find additional resources to aid your preparation. These include the following:
• A brief bibliography
• A list of websites related to AP Macroeconomics
• A glossary of terms related to the AP Macroeconomics exam
• A summary of formulas related to the AP Macroeconomics exam
To emphasize particular skills and strategies, several icons appear in the margins, alerting you to pay particular attention to the accompanying text:
This icon indicates a very important concept or fact that you should not pass over.
This icon calls your attention to a strategy that you might want to try.
This icon alerts you to a tip that you might find useful.
Boldfaced words indicate terms that are included in the glossary. Throughout the book you will also find marginal notes, boxes, and starred areas. Pay close attention to these areas because they can provide tips, hints, strategies, and further explanations to help you reach your full potential.
