By Daniel Amalan
AP Calculus AB is the endpoint for most students in their math journey in high school. Now if you’re worried, this is a little bit of advice for the class next year. This is assuming most of you are rising juniors who took IM3 STEM this year, which leads to my first piece of advice.
Review IM3 STEM Stuff
Whether you had Ms. Tu or Mr. Sessions, each of them cover, and don’t cover, specific topics in IM3 STEM. It’s really helpful if you brush up on trigonometric identities, unit circle, everything on functions, basic algebra, and exponential/logarithmic identities. If you don’t know any of that off the top of your head, then your number one priority is to review. I heard that the future calculus students got summer homework, so you should probably do it, and make sure you’re proactively learning these concepts
Be Ready to Understand New Topics
OK, so calculus is basically like a new way of looking at math, specifically functions. These new topics are pretty hard to wrap your mind around, so be ready to learn these new concepts. A good idea would be to take a summer course either on calculus concepts, or pre-calc. I did one at De Anza College, but there are a lot of other free alternatives like Khan Academy if you’re willing to self-learn.
Take Advantage of Resources in Class
Both Ms. Tu and Mr. Zaplawa give out homework each day. I’m not sure about Mr. Zaplawa, but Ms. Tu’s homework is optional. However, just because it’s optional, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it. Most of it is pulled out of past AP exams so it is great for practice. It’s also a good review for the unit tests/quizzes which can really damage your grade if you do terrible on them. Also, most of the practice problems this year were harder than the ones on the AP test, so doing these problems will overprepare you for the AP test. Also buying those AP prep books (Princeton or Barron’s) are helpful since they provide you with lots of practice MCQs and FRQs. Even though they aren’t 100% AP accurate, the sheer amount of practice problems will help reinforce those key concepts in your head.
Getting a 5 is Easier Than Getting an A
The Calculus AB Exam is divided into 4 sections: non-calculator MCQ, calculator MCQ, calculator FRQ, and non-calculator FRQ. The FRQs are usually harder because they require you to show and do more work, but the MCQs are weighted more on the exam. So even if you completely bomb your FRQs, but ace your MCQs, you might get a 3 or 4 on the AP Exam. Getting an A in AP Calc is much harder than getting a 5 on the AP Exam . My advice is to make sure you stay on top of your participation points, which both teachers require. These points replace your traditional homework, and even missing a day can still hurt your grade by a noticeable amount. The unit exams, and quizzes are the harder part of the class. For the unit exams, the best advice I have is if you understand the material and have done your practice problems you should be fine. The Calc AB quizzes are what I struggled with the most—mainly since I didn’t pay attention to the time limit. As long as you’ve prepared, and can manage your time well, quizzes should be fine. Also if a certain test is extremely difficult, usually the teachers will enact a curve.
Have Good Habits
Look, if you don’t have the habit of going to your teachers for help or having good study routines, you’re probably going to need them. If you took AP World History, you kind of have to study for AP Calculus like that course, but instead of reviewing history, it’s mostly just cramming practice problems and memorizing the fundamentals. However, if you are really good at math and pretty much know all of this stuff already, this class will be extremely boring for you, no joke. At that point, the only advice I can give you is to not become overconfident or “become geeked,” which is probably going to be the thing tanking your grade. Anyway, for everyone else, I think finding some friends in AP Calc will help you go a long way. Friends will help push you and help you study. Also, they make the class not that monotonous.
Don’t Be Scared
A lot of people use the excuse: “Why are we learning calculus, if it’s never going to show up in our average lives?” I’d argue that the point of calculus is showing people (colleges) that your mind is strong enough to understand these topics.There are also concepts in calculus that are semi-useful like optimization in building anything or related rates for rates-production management. It also shows that you can dissect complex problems with various information thrown at you. Lastly, don’t go into this class scared. If you’re scared, you’ll be likely to make mistakes (the same as being overconfident). If you really put effort into it, and train yourself to understand these new concepts you will do fine in the class.