what if I told you that you don't have to remember everything you learned in your class in order to pass your AP exam or even get a four or a five there's only particular set of information that you need to recall for your exam and the rest you can forget because you won't be tested on and even further within that pile of information you have to know some of it is more represented on the exam than other parts how do I know this for the past seven months I've been able to hack into the closed circuit cameras and the college board's test writing rooms and now I'm ready to expose everything they've been working on is what I would say if I was Mark rope but I'm not Mark Rober I'm about a humble history teacher and I got all this Secret inside information not because it's secret nor because it's inside it's like publicly available which doesn't make for a great action sequence I went on the internet and I clicked on it regardless even though it's publicly available you might not know where to find it and how to use it so that's where I come in so if you're ready to get them bring cows milked let's get to it okay so I'm gonna give you two ways to figure this out one of them is free and the other costs a little bit of money I've been getting some heat in my comments about the paid option but I'll answer my detractors in a moment drama it's just for attention so you know please watch everything and subscribe love you so the free way to figure out what you need to remember and what you can forget is by downloading the course and exam description Hereafter known as the CED for your course this is a document published by the college board that outlines the required knowledge that will show up on your exam just go to Google and type in APUSH CED or whatever your course is and this is true for every AP sub now in the next section of this video I'm going to show you how to use this to study because it's not immediately apparent but for now check this out if you click on the part that says exam overview you can find this section right here which will tell you which units are more important to study so an AP World units three to six are going to be more represented on the exam an apgov it's unit 2 in an AP Euro well you know sorry guys they're all basically the same but regardless these percentages will tell you where you should focus most of your study but wait there's more the CED will also tell you from which units and time periods the exam writers are allowed to pull your writing prompts for the History exam but for the government exam it'll tell you exactly what kinds of writing questions to expect and how you can prepare for this so like I said anyone with an internet connection has access to these documents and they are free but I still need to show you you the best way to use them to study however before we get there let me mention the paid way to get all this information and you'll see how powerfully I've been criticized about this paid way is to buy my AP review packs which have unit review videos for all the units the majority of which are not here on YouTube it's got practice questions and practice tests Etc I mentioned this resource a lot during this time of the year because I really think it is the best and quickest way to study for your exam but I've recently been smeared publicly for encouraging you guys to buy this for example one commenter said I know Mr heimler has to feed his family fruit he is selling that review pack to us like it's the Holy Grail of life I know what started as just a fun activity in my damp basement has now turned me into a sellout I mean I was I was going to mention that you should also get my vitamin supplements which will deposit all the right answers directly into your brain and to help you lose five pounds in the process but I really need to think about my life choices hmm oh that's not the whole comment no that student continues yes well it worked anyway since I bought the review packs for AP World and a push thanks for the five on world and the prep for U.S anyway enough about that let me show you how to use both of these resources to study if you get the review packs They Don't Really require any explanation it's all laid out for you you just go through it and you're golden but if you want to go with the CED let me show you the best way to use it first navigate to the topic you want to study and here you'll find four very important sections here you'll see the theme for the topic or in government it's called the enduring understanding which are connected to five Big Ideas if I were you I would organize my notes by these themes and this will pay off huge for the writing sections which I'll explain in a moment you can find a list of those themes near the beginning of the CED and these will repeat over and over again throughout the whole curriculum so create a section of your notes for each theme and keep the content organized under each and here's why this will help you because when you get to the writing section of your exam every prompt you see will come from one or more of these themes so if you have to write about economic changes over time then boom you have all the economic information across the entire course in one place and that could be a game changer for you okay now let's move through the other parts a little more quickly the second part to focus on is the learning objective this is the broad question that you should be able to answer after you know all the information on this page and it's a great way to study like learn everything here then try to answer this question but what do you need to learn in order to answer that question well this section right here historical developments or in government Essential Knowledge if it's listed here you have to know it especially if it's a proper noun but if your teacher covered something that's not in here you don't have to know it for the exam but hold on there's one more section to pay attention to and that is the illustrative example now some of these historical developments are pretty specific but others are kind of vague and as a general rule the vague developments are further refined by these examples over here in other words these are the specific pieces of evidence that illustrate the broad generalization over here but look you don't have to know all of them for example here it says you have to know examples of economic imperialism in Asia and Latin America over here you've got one example in Asia and one in Latin America okay so good idea to know both of those but here it says you need to know Commodities that gave Western Powers economic advantage and over here they give you four examples of that but since it just says Commodities you really only need to know two of them and it doesn't matter which two you just pick them and if you already know another example that's not listed here then just remember that you won't be tested on exactly what's in these columns these are just potential examples you could use especially in your writing okay so if you do that for the whole curriculum you will be golden when exam day comes but what's the best method for actually studying well that video is right here and you need to go there next also you can click here to grab my AP review packs for APUSH AP World and AP Euro and AP Gov and I'll catch on the flip-flop heimler out