I don’t think there is any way to really give you specific advice here, as I think the classes and our kids varied quite a bit in what they required, but it was also very teacher-dependent. Our kids have scored 5s on all the APs they’ve taken, but this may be attributable to excellent teaching as well as over-preparation (built into the classes, my kids don’t study, and teachers are motivated for kids to succeed here.) A big part of AP exam success is knowing what to expect, format, speed/efficiency, etc. and a good teacher will address this.
I guess the biggest challenge for both our kids was adjusting to the volume of reading required for history classes, and the level of detailed recall expected. Being procrastinators and unused to the high volume, it took them both a while to recognize they couldn’t leave the week’s assignments until Sunday night and expect to perform well on the frequent, detail-oriented quizzes. There was high volume, both textbook and supplemental readings, and the quizzes were so detail-oriented that they required drilling down, even remembering a fact or name only mentioned once in a caption on an illustration, for example. I don’t know if this is standard, or even necessary, but it’s how their history classes were taught. They also benefitted from debate and discussion, which was the part of the classes they enjoyed and appreciate- this varied a lot by teachers, and according to our kids, was less related to any exam success; they did feel it was where most of the good learning happened, however.
For math and science classes, the work was very do-able, as long as the teachers were organized. And all but one of our experiences here were good- we had a physics teacher who didn’t follow a syllabus and was fairly random in what he included on exams, which were infrequent and high-stakes, grade-wise. In this situation, our daughter and friends ended up basically self-teaching using AP review books and various online sources they discovered independently. The class was very time-intensive, both because of this and because of the structure of the labs- kids regularly had to stay after school to complete stuff that should have been doable during the two-period class/lab period, because of how things were organized (poorly).
AP English classes here are restricted not by student level, but by grade, so only seniors are allowed to take them (completely arbitrary, but our English department does a very good job leading up to this with their own curriculum which included classes focused on public speaking, lit, essay writing, etc, so we didn’t complain). Anyway, AP lit was a good experience, just a lot of volume reading, but there was choice and there are really no poor choices in that canon anyway, as far as I’m concerned. It was taught with a lot of independence as far as what to read and writing assignments, perhaps because it was all seniors. My kid did not study for the exam, but that’s standard for her. Discussions were integral here, and were well-done.
Most of the AP classes here require summer work, in part because our classes start late, after Labor Day, and in part because I think they want to make sure the students realize there will be work required, so it’s sort of a weed-out thing. So some kids bail before the class begins, as the assignments for the summer can be daunting, or just a huge pain they don’t want to deal with. The worst for summer work was history, readings and writing (either a paper or detailed short answer questions, sort of mini-essays). For English they had to read a couple novels and write at least one paper, maybe answer some short answer questions and do a journal. There were review packets and problem sets for some sciences and math, teacher-dependent.
Again, I’m not sure if this was overkill, and my kids would never have done most of it were it not required. So as far as preparing your kid, I don’t know what to suggest. We did help them look hard at the time commitments of their extracurriculars and other activities, as the demands on their time were heavy and required conscious balancing, prioritizing, etc- probably the toughest, but most valuable lesson learned. Motivation was also a challenge at times- busy work can be hard to sustain, particularly when there are kids cheating and gaming the system (why take your own notes when you can print off some from the internet- except these are bring graded...). Again, my kids learned lessons from this, too, but it was difficult.
