<p>Barely need Calc AB. There was a girl in my class who had never taken calc and she just picked up basic knowledge of derivatives and integrals in the first week.</p>
<p>There is usually one part of a problem on the AP exam that requires some tricky integration and a lot of work, but the amount of points rewarded for solving correctly is usually disproportionate to the amount of work. I’ve known students capable of solving that calc who skipped it just because it was a time-sucker; it’s more strategic to get the easy/quick points first. However, I always did the calc because it was kind of fun for me (yes, I am a geek you could say).</p>
<p>As for jumping from no physics into C, this is very difficult. I enrolled into AP Physics C with no prior physics education and struggled for the first semester a great deal. However, I ended up getting a 5 on the exam and an A for the second semester. High motivation + Great teacher = Success :)</p>