For all those taking the U.S. History Subject Test in June, I’d thought I’d give us a little primer on what to expect.
Multiple Choice:
The multiple choice is made up of 90 questions tested over a period of 60 minutes. There is no writing part to the score (on a scale of 200-800) made up solely on the multiple choice. College Board does give a disclaimer that because the way U.S. history is taught so differently across the U.S., there will be questions on topics we might not be familiar with. However, they stress that we don’t need to get every single questions right in order to get the highest score possible (800).
Skills You Will Need:
-Familiarity with historical concepts, cause-and-effect relationships, geography and other data necessary for understanding major historical developments
-A grasp of concepts essential to historical analysis
-An ability to use historical knowledge in interpreting data in maps, graphs, charts or cartoons
Test Breakdown:
From what I've read about online the subject test doesn't seem to be harder than the AP exam so I think with a little review or maybe just a couple of practice test we should do fine. College Board has practice questions on their website here.
(And just to save you the trouble: the national average for this test is 651)
Good post! I also believe that this is not a test that we should stress over about. Coupled with the fact with how well and how hard we seemed to have prepared for the AP test, this subject test should be no problem.
ReplyDeleteIt sort of looks like the Ap test in terms of how it is structured because it seems they don't ask too much on the Pre Columbian era to 1789 whereas they focus more on 1790 to the present day.
ReplyDeleteI don't want to discourage anyone, but I found the Subject SAT (which I took in May) to be much tougher than the AP Test. The questions weren't necessarily tougher, it's just the scale is pretty severe. In practice tests, I was missing more than 20 questions, which scaled to about a 670 (whereas on the AP Test, a 60 / 80 is 75% which gives you a 5). On test day though, I got lucky with the question draw and did significantly better.
ReplyDeleteTwo tips: 1. Unlike the AP Test, you get a quarter point deduction for each wrong answer, so be careful if you start guessing.
2. The College and Career Center has some great resources for the Subject SAT. I didn't really like the Barrons History book, but REA and Kaplan were both very useful.
Great idea! Thanks so much for the helpful insight into how I should be studying for this test. I didn't really know much about it, so this has definitely helped me in terms of how and how much I should study!
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