Hi everyone — back again with another self-study story!
This time it’s about AP Environmental Science, the AP exam I studied for the shortest amount of time… but somehow ended up getting a 5 on.
And yes — that’s without a tutor, class, online course, or academy.
Before I go any further, I want to be very clear:
Please don’t read this and think, “Oh, I can just study for 3 days too!” 😭
When I saw posts on College Confidential, Quora, and Reddit saying “APES is easy — you can cram it in a few days!”, I believed them.
And technically, yes, I managed it — but every single minute was pure anxiety.
I’d studied ecology in my high school biology class the previous year, so I already knew some of the core concepts.
That background helped me speed through things I didn’t have to learn from scratch.
So if you’re starting from zero, please give yourself at least a week or two.
But if you already have some environmental or ecology knowledge, this subject can be a great option for a quick, efficient self-study.
I started with a slim green book called Smarty Pants: AP Environmental Science, before moving on to The Princeton Review.
The Smarty Pants book is much thinner, but it covers almost all of the essential content in a highly compressed way.
However — and this is important —
Don’t rely on this book alone.
It’s great for getting the big picture, but too light for full coverage.
Because I knew I had only three days (Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) to study, I broke my own rule and used a highlighter on my first read-through.