I will be starting my freshman year at UCSB this upcoming fall and just recently chose the classes I’ll be taking my first semester. I will be taking Calculus 1, General Chemistry, and Government and Politics. I’ve already taken AP Government in high school but not AP Calculus or AP Chemistry, so I decided to pick up some AP Chem and Calc prep books to get a head start on things. However, I’ve heard from several friends that I’m wasting my time as these books do not cover all the material needed and that the pratice questions in these books are considerably easier than problems I’d run into during the actual course. Is this true?
TL;DR: To what extent do AP Prep books mimic the college courses they’re intended to replace. Are they easier? Harder? Not comprehensive enough?
As in so many things: it depends. The curriculum for APs is developed with college professors, based on what they expect a basic introductory course to cover. BUT: the university you go to may divide up their classes differently. It may be more academically competitive. The questions in a prep book will be designed to be answered in a standardized test format. What your particular professor emphasizes may be different. etc.
So, it won’t hurt you to get a prep book to get an overview/introduction/ some vocabulary. It would probably be more helpful to order the actual text books that you will be using and start taking a look at it now (which is what D2 has done for her Electromagnetism course this autumn).
I originally considered doing that, but I was told at orientation that it’d probably be best to wait until the first week of school to buy textbooks. I guess I’ll keep studying off of the AP books, but I really hope I’m not wasting my time.
Any pre-studying is wasting your time. They’ll teach you in the class; no need to expend effort teaching yourself the stuff you will learn (most likely more easily) later.