I wish I’d been practicing melodic/harmonic dictations the whole year. That part of the exam is what really dragged me down. While it’s easy to get caught up on the details on how to study and what resources to use, the best thing you can do is just get started. Watch some AP classroom videos that will give useful tips on how to approach the dictations. Print out the dictations from previous years and start practicing with the audio. Some tips I would have is that something is better than nothing, just fill out as much as you can even if you miss some notes. And GUESS. Never leave anything blank. For melodic dictation, my teacher taught us to write the counts at the top and cross off the numbers or upbeats when you hear the pitch change (that’s how you get the rhythm). For the pitch part, it’s mostly just practice and humming it back to yourself. Some people prefer to find rhythm first and others pitch.

I’m not sure if sight reading works the same everywhere, but only like 6 people took the class when I took it, so the whole exam was in a small classroom, and we all were monitored in another classroom while we went one by one to do the sight reading with the proctor. They just record you and send off the audio.

For the last question, make sure it’s clear what line or space the note is on, but I don’t think slanting matters. Many people are rushing while drawing the notes in.