So you're a high school student and you've gotten good grades in math since you were about 6, so your parents are making you take AP Calculus your senior year. Bummer, huh?

Not a chance. As long as you're going to a university that gives credit for AP exams, these classes are one of the greatest programs you will ever experience in your educational career. AP classes may seem really hard when you're in high school, and they may seem like they're not worth the trouble, but they will make the first couple of years of college way easier. As hard as they are, most AP classes aren't as hard as the college equivalents that you will get credit for if you pass the exam (or get a 4 or 5, depending on the college).

The key, though, is getting a 5 on the test. Sure, just passing it is enough for some classes and some colleges, but we're going for the gold here. So how do you raise your score? It's two (somewhat obvious) things: knowledge and practice.

One of the great things about AP exams is that the people who write them don't mess with you very much. Unlike the SAT, where the questions are designed so you make mistakes, AP questions are generally a lot more straightforward. They often test hard concepts, but the questions themselves aren't made to confuse you. Plus, the AP graders basically try to give you as much credit as possible, and everything is designed so that you pick up as many points as possible (as opposed to starting with a 100% and losing points for the mistakes you make). The key is to tap into this to maximize your score, which we'll discuss a little later.

Another great thing is that you only have to get about 65-70% (by your normal school testing standards, varying by test) to get a 5. Again, the key here is to maximize the number of points you get so you end up with the highest possible score.

So here's how the grading works. Once all the exams come in after the first two complete weeks of May (which is when the AP exams are always held), the AP Gods look at all the students' answers and come up with a rubric.

A few weeks later, it's time to thank some teachers. The people who administer the AP exams, the College Board, pay a pittance to both high school teachers and college professors to grade the hundreds of thousands of exams that come in every year. You can find old AP exams on the College Board site, and you can see how the rubrics work as well. They make it as simple as possible to grade. For everything you do, you get a certain

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