Looking For a 5 On Your Next AP Exam? 
You're In The Right Place!

Best AP Prep Books

Instead of relying on recommendations of your friends or teachers listen to the recommendations of:

  • 194+ experienced AP teachers
  • 3 AP exam graders
  • 8,000+ successful (4 or 5 on the exam) students

With an absurd total amount of AP exam experience and thousands of total hours spent on finding the best and most effective AP books, you can be sure that our picks are right for you.

Our Goal

We started Exam Genius because so many of our students came up to us and asked if a certain AP prep book they found online is good for the exam.

Most of the time, the answer was a definitive no.

They got their recommendations from random sites that had no idea if a book was actually good or not.

We would like to put a stop to that.

We want to provide honest recommendations that will actually help you get the score you're aiming for (which is usually a 4 or a 5).​​​​

Since the format and content of some tests changes every single year, we have to keep track of what the changes are, and what new- or old- books are good, and which ones should be avoided.

AP Test Info

We don't just want to be a "book recommendation" site.

We also want to help you understand the exam and beat it without paying thousands of dollars for expensive tutors.

That's why for every exam we'll give you a quick summary of:

  1. The exam structure- so you know what to expect.
  2. When the exam was last changed- so you know if you need a new book or if an old version works fine.
  3. How long you should study for the exam.
  4. What other resources to use to study for the exam. (Usually free)
  5. Books to avoid- So you don't waste your hard-earned money.

We might add more content to each section later, but for now that's all we will include.

Our Approach

We have AP exam experience ourselves, but we don't teach every subject out there so we did the following to figure out what the best books are:

  • Talked to as many of our colleagues as we could and discussed what books they've tried, which ones they think are the best, and which ones students should avoid.
  • Interviewed their highest scoring students to figure out what books they used for the exam.
  • Talked to 3 AP exam graders to figure out which of the books on the market reflect the actual AP questions the best. 

Who We Are

We've already told you that this site encompasses the information that comes from nearly 200 AP teachers and 3 AP exam graders.

However, not all 200 teachers run the site.

We're a small team of 3 high-school teachers, 2 student interns, and 1 tech/advertising guy to help us get the site out there and help more people.

We're a small team with a big task, and we're proud of it.

Our Promise To You

We aim to bring you honest and effective information about the best study materials for all AP exams.

If you feel that the books you got using our recommendations weren't as good as you expected, please contact us as we'd like to see how else we can help you and what went wrong.

However, please only do this once you actually know your exam scores.

Way too often we have students panicking after the exam because they think they failed, but once the scores come in, they actually got a 4 or a 5. 

Please don't be that person. 🙂

We already get a ton of emails every day..