European Studies

The AP European History AP test’s multiple choice section is designed to test your factual knowledge as well as your analytical capacity. Multiple choice tests, in European History of any other subject, can be extremely difficult for the unprepared. Taking the time to study both the material and the test in advance will help improve your final grade, whether you’re preparing for a final exam or just the next chapter’s test.

The AP European History exam gives you 55 minutes to answer 80 multiple choice questions. Half will cover the period from 1450 to 1815, and the other half are on 1815 to the present. Furthermore, 24-28 questions will discuss each of the following topics: Politics and Diplomacy, Culture and Intellectual themes, and finally social and economic themes. What does this mean to you? If you want to do will, you’ll basically have to study everything, including the full range of time periods and topics.

To make you feel a little better, what will the European history multiple choice questions not cover? Multiple choice questions will never cover military history, and theoretically aren’t purely based on memorization. However, in my experience there are quite a few questions that break this rule, although I’m sure the AP writers would disagree with me. I’ve never seen military strategy questions though, so don’t waste your time studying exactly what happened in the Battle of Passchendaele. Read the rest of this entry »

Need help with you next European history test? With proper preparation, Euro tests can be easy to beat. Let’s take a quick look at simple ways to prepare for European history. In a real hurry? Scroll down to the bottom for a complete European history study guide!

The first step in euro test preparation is making sure you can mentally summarize the main ideas of the unit. Can you quickly list the major themes you went over in class? Write these topics down, you’ll be needing them throughout your preparation.

Next, you need to start reviewing the major facts to remember about each event on your list. Let’s use World War 1 as an example. Go through the event chronologically, explaining exactly what happened and why. For WWI, start with the nature of the world before war broke out.

Then move to the sparks that ignited the war, explaining why the conflict grew so quickly (mention topics like the system of alliances and the situations of each major country; Russia, for example, couldn’t ignore activities in the Balkans for a third straight time without loosing all power in the region). Proceed through the even chronologically in this manner, interweaving your own observations and analysis. Read the rest of this entry »