dchow08

Hi,

I got a 5 on the test last year, and I really knew the material well, so I think I'm qualified to give you some tips:

- You've got to learn the material. There is just no way around it. So if you want that 4 or 5, you've got to get one-to-one with the Calculus textbook you're using. Get serious. It's there to help you.
- Make sure you know the very important stuff (all the stuff is important, really):

- derivatives, position, velocity, acceleration, the difference between velocity and speed
- power rule, other rules for finding the derivatives, product rule, chain rule, quotient rule
- related rates (the trick is to find a relationship between the derivatives. There's always something like dV/ds x ds/dt = dV/dt (since the ds's cross out)).
- understanding of integration (for example, if I have a chart of how much oil is depleted over time, what would the area under the curve mean? Stuff like that. There are examples on old AP tests, on the CollegeBoard website).
- memorize formulas for integration (do power rule backwards, substitution)
- Mean Value Theorem, FUNDAMENTAL THEOREM OF CALCULUS, Intermediate Value Theorem (?)
- LRAM, RRAM, MRAM techniques of estimating area by hand.
- Geometric, 3-d solids, 2-d areas (find area under curve, slice method, washer method, disk method, shell method).
- things you've just got to memorize (derivative of sin, cos, tan, inverse sin, inverse cos, inverse tan, e, ln)
- Extra stuff if you have time that might be asked on multiple-choice just to stump people: partial fractions, trigonometric substitution
- Other stuff I didn't mention, such as slope fields

The point is: there is no way around it. You've got to know what you're doing. Understand the concepts! I'm concerned that, since you do have a C, you're not understanding the concepts. It's easy to fall behind. You've got to catch up!

I recommend Calculus Made Easy by Thompson, Gardner (helps with understanding of derivatives and integrals). This should have been read a long time ago, when you were just learning about derivatives. It gives a very good explanation of the concepts of the derivative and integral.

Make sure you really know for free response
- integrating to find volume of solid rotated around axis/area under curve
- chart problems concerning integration (what does it mean in this context)
- related rates
- position, velocity, acceleration (look at old FRQ's, they ask this all the time)
- slope fields. This might be big this year. They haven't asked a slope fields FRQ in quite a long time, and this year might be it. Last year when I took the class my teacher was like, make sure you know slope fields! There's a good chance they'll show up this year! But, on last year's test, slope fields only showed up on one multiple-choice question. So expect it this year!

If you need help, feel free to send me a private message. Don't ask me for specific homework questions, but if you don't understand a concept (e.g. Washer method), feel free to ask.