From day one, I had a rule in my classes, and that rule was that throughout the entire school year, students were never allowed to ask me some variation of “Can I get a 5 on the AP exam?” or “Can I get a 7 on the IB exam?”.
At risk of sounding like some sort of self-help guru, it really is true that you shouldn’t ask “can I get a 5?”, but rather, “how can I get a 5?”. This is a crucial difference. As I told every one of my students, of course you can get the score you want, if you put in the work.
Another reason that I didn’t allow this question is that it sets the wrong goal. Ability does not stop at a 5 or a 7, or an 800, or any other particular number. In the grand scheme of psychological knowledge, exams really just scratch the surface. What is your true academic potential? Certainly you are capable of going far beyond the scope of these examinations. If I told you that you would certainly get a perfect score a month before the exam, would you really be content to just stop? Would you refuse to learn anything more no matter how interesting it was?
Rather than an externally focused goal in the form of a grade, you should focus on making progress each day, regardless of what point you’re at now. Greater knowledge of psychology provides you with skills that are not domain-specific and you’ll find that you can apply this knowledge to any other subjects you might study. Learning how to consider scientific explanations, evaluate evidence, and better understand behavior are skills that can be continually developed throughout a lifetime. I’d like to hope that even after you get that high score, you’ll still be interested in learning more psychology. And if I had to guess, I think exam day probably won’t be the last time you find yourself facing questions about human behavior.
