Practice to Mastery

Twelve complete AP® Biology practice exams - and a written explanation for every single question.

Most practice tests tell you your score. This book tells you why you missed what you missed. That is where more than 200,000 words of it go.

WHAT IS INSIDE

- 12 full-length practice exams. 792 questions in all: 720 multiple-choice and 72 free-response.

- Every exam follows the published format exactly. Section I is 60 multiple-choice questions in 90 minutes, worth half the score. Section II is 6 free-response questions in 90 minutes, worth 34 points and the other half. The questions are spread across the eight units in the proportions the official course framework publishes.

- Every multiple-choice question has a written explanation - about 150 words each - that says why the keyed answer is right and then names the reasoning that leads students to the most tempting wrong answer and shows exactly where it breaks down.

- Every free-response question has a point-by-point scoring guide, 408 scoring points across the twelve exams, plus model-response guidance and a short note on the idea the question is really testing.

- The answer key, the explanations and the scoring guides follow each exam. You can sit a paper, mark it, and learn from it in one sitting, without hunting through the back of the book.

EVERY EXAM COVERS THE ENTIRE COURSE

A real exam samples the syllabus. It cannot ask about everything, so a student who sits one paper only learns how they did on the part of the course that paper happened to cover.

Every paper in this book reaches all 60 topics of the official course framework. All sixty, on all twelve papers. Sixty-six questions against sixty topics leaves no room for chance, so the coverage here is assigned question by question and checked, not hoped for.

What that buys you is a score you can act on. When you miss a question in this book you have found a real gap, not a topic that happened to come up. Work any one of these papers and you have met the entire course; work all twelve and you have met it twelve times, from twelve different angles.

BUILT TO REWARD REAL UNDERSTANDING

The exam rewards students who can carry an idea from one unit into another, so 44 percent of the multiple-choice questions need two units at once. Two units are combined only where the official framework places both on the same big idea, so nothing here tests a connection the course does not make.

Roughly half the questions rest on data - tables, measurements, experimental results - because that is how the real paper asks. Nothing is grouped by difficulty and no difficulty is printed, because the real paper prints none either.

COMPLETELY ORIGINAL

Every question, data set, table and explanation in this book was written for it. No question is taken from, adapted from, or modeled on any released or secure College Board examination item, and no passage is reproduced from any textbook or other published source.

WHO IT IS FOR

Students preparing for the AP® Biology Exam, and anyone taking a first college course in general biology who wants timed practice with feedback worth reading. It works on its own, and it is the companion to Practice to Mastery: AP® Biology, the unit workbook, with which it shares no questions.

AP® is a registered trademark of the College Board. The College Board is not affiliated with Practice to Mastery, was not involved in producing this book, and does not endorse it.