<p>@LemonCat: I’d say a lot of my motivation came from the fact that it WOULDN’T show up on my transcript. Self-studying is nice for so many reasons:</p>
<p>No unnecessary, unproductive homework. For calc especially, I was able to spend more time on the tricky concepts and less time on the easier ones instead of slaving through rigorous coursework for every concept.</p>
<p>Colleges see that you’re self-motivated (if you’re not a senior :P). I guess you could accomplish this with SAT IIs as well, but you wouldn’t get the college credit (which is worth noting–you save a LOT of time and money by self-studying).</p>
<p>It teaches you to REALLY study (if you don’t cram weeks prior to the exam.) When you don’t have a teacher to guide you, you have to teach yourself efficient study methods in order to learn the material.</p>
<p>I could go on, but I think I’ve gotten my point across…self-study more APs :]</p>
<p>Chemistry, Calculus, English, and Microeconomics are technically half self studies, since I had a semester of either IB or AP (moved to another school midyear).</p>
<p>Biology - 5: read parts of a textbook and the entire Cliffnotes
Chemistry - 5: MIT OCW and Berkeley podcast; (one semester (2nd) of formal class)
Chinese - 5: native speaker; practiced reading online articles by c&p’ing them into google translate and selecting Chinese to Chinese (pinyin).
Calculus BC - 5: watched MIT OCW and Khan Academy; (one semester (2nd) of formal class (AB))
English Language - 5: looked over College Board past essay responses; (one semester (1st) of Eng HL)
Environmental Science - 5: read PR
Human Geography - 4: read PR and online notes
Microeconomics - 5: Berkeley podcast and PR; (1 semester (1st) of IB Econ HL)
Physics C Mechanics - 5: watched MIT OCW, Khan Academy, and Viren’s youtube physics videos; my aunt’s Physics for Scientists and Engineers textbook from college (yep, it’s nearly 30 years old), PR and 5 Steps to a 5
Psychology - 5: read PR and appsychology.com notes; listened to a a few Berkeley podcast</p>
<p>I’d definitely recommend watching MIT OCW combined with Khan Academy for self studying AP’s. Berkeley podcast is a close runner-up, especially for courses not available on MIT OCW.
On a side note, I agree with aboveblues. Generally AP classes (or HS classes in general) are loaded with useless and tedious work. Self studying APs is much more fun and productive, with half the time and stress :)</p>
<p>10 APs in one year? Are you crazy? (rhetorical question) :)</p>
<p>Bio. ------------ (5 Steps to a 5) + (Raven 9th Ed.) + (McGraw-Hill Online Animations)</p>
<p>Calc. AB -------- (Larson 9th Ed.)</p>
<p>I haven’t gotten my scores back yet (I did late testing). </p>
<p>I hate cramming so I started at the beginning of the school year. I didn’t plan it out very well though and ended up still cramming in May. </p>
<p>Tips for studying from a Bio. textbook: Some chapters are stand-alones and don’t require outside knowledge. If you get stuck on a hard chapter start studying one of these. Also, you should frequently review to get things solid in your memory. </p>
<p>Tips for studying from a Calc. textbook: Work the problems. If you learned related rates early on in the year don’t forget to do frequent practice problems. (I didn’t and that was a big mistake.) </p>
<p>If you have multiple APs to study I switching it up definitely helps. I’d try to do like 10 minutes of Bio. and then 10 of Calc. for 3 cycles and get a good hour of studying done every day. It usually didn’t happen but it was a lot funner to mix it up.</p>
<p>English Lit - 5. Took honors version of senior class, did some prep with Princeton Review book (mostly in terms of essays, not multiple choice). Plan ahead - I decided to take the exam really early in the year, so I had plenty of time to prepare.</p>
<p>It is definitely doable. I took precalc and self studied AB starting in January. Precalc is only useful as a review for AB, you’ll learn about vectors and series and stuff but that’s only helpful for BC.</p>
<p>Honestly, you should probably just self study BC. It’s only a bit harder than AB, and you’ll be happier if you do it. Start in like October w/ Khan Academy vids and the peterson’s book.</p>
<p>My success on that exam was based mostly on self-study and on an intensive language course I took last summer in Germany (2-3 weeks). I used some textbooks that correspond to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (google it), and would say that the AP German exam is roughly equivalent to the B1 level.</p>
<p>For Calc I used Calculus: Early Transcendentals by James Stewart (which was also my Calc AB textbook that I used in school). For Physics, I used Fundamentals of Physics by Halliday, Resnick and Walker. Just before the AP exam, I used this site called hippocampus.org for review.</p>
<p>If you want to study these AP tests, I highly recommend you buy a textbook and START EARLY. I had to cram E&M a bit near the end because I almost ran out of time. These are not tests that you can easily cram for. Even if you can, you won’t learn anything. Prep books should only be used near the end for practice, not as your primary resource.</p>
<p>Psych - 4; college course for kicks in the fall, Barron’s + online help, as well as a study buddy. I’m actually pretty ****ed off at this one, I thought it’d be a safe 5.</p>
<p>Human Geo - 5; Barron’s for about two weeks before the test. I thought this was going to be a 2/3 for sure, given that I failed half the FRQs, and the MC was pretty ***. Content.</p>
<p>EnviroSci - 4; PR about a week before the test; didn’t finish FRQs, and they confused me anyways. Ok on MC. Not bad, considering.</p>