Ap Calculus Ab Midterm Review: Fill & Download for Free

Actually, as others have touched on,starting point is higher, e.g.,no remedial high school mathematics at MITthe majority (even vast majority) at MIT start at multivariable Calculus or higher these daysyou start at your natural starting point (there’s a number of mechanisms like Advanced Standing Exams, AP/IB credit if you score a 5 on the AP Calculus BC exam or 7 on IB HL Mathematics), etc.means you don’t waste time. You demonstrate you’ve mastered the fundamentals, you move on. There are ways to place out of a number of mathematics courses, 8.01, 8.02, 8.03, 5.11x, etc.Pace is faster (18.01, 18.02 are usually twice as fast as Boston University, University of Toledo, etc.) — I’ve covered all that and more.More content / more depthQuality of students is generally higherMore ambitious, very accomplished students and facultytherefore, networking opportunities are betterPart of why you should consider or not consider an elite university gets down to fit.When I was doing my analysis, a lot of why I chose MIT (and I didn’t apply to any liberal arts colleges) over say UBC or any other university came down to fit.I have a late uncle and a couple of cousins who went to MIT so I knew what to expectI had the right ballpark of achievements (e.g., top STEM student, no ranking in my high school but there were four of us out of 203 who had 4.0 GPA, I qualified for AIME x2, USAMO x1, a bunch of other stuff, I think I made like 5 or 6 mistakes all year in Calculus [AP Calculus AB] and walked away with a 99% average)I wanted a place that would challenge me and that the sky was the limit in terms of growth and learningI wanted to meet the best of the best among my peers and knew that many of them would be better than me. (I kind of didn’t want a place where I would be walking in knowing I’d be among the best — already did that in high school.)I did not want to do single-variable Calculus or Calculus-based Physics in a year. Too slow for my taste. (I ended up ASE’ing out of 8.01 and 5.11.)in contrast, one of my best friends had taken AP Calculus BC and was forced to sit through a year’s worth of Single-variable Calculus. He came to what he thought was the review session, but it was the midterm. He crushed it and was demotivated for the rest of the year.I wanted to do researchI liked all the requirements that MIT had (even Phys.Ed., swimming requirement, 8 humanities, the quantitative approach to just about everything, etc.)what MIT covered in 4 years, UBC would have covered in 6 years (including MIT’s undergraduate thesis requirements)I liked the “somewhat rebellious” culture of MIT: technology is disruptive and sometimes requires that you’re open to trying things a new way or that you’re open to the idea of doing things differently than they were done before.you might try to understand why and how things were done in the past, and you might even respect that, but you’re open to new ways of doing things.I had lived all my life in Canada and wanted to experience somewhere else that would be sufficiently diverse and different to challenge me.I wanted a place where the values would align with my values.And MIT was the first place where I really felt “at home” for the first time in my life. I really felt like, yes, this is where I was meant to be, and I thrived there.So yes, the above included about 10 reasons that I had (and I had a few more) when I answered “Why do you want to study at MIT?”

Definitely go over Pre Calculus.Knowing your sine, cosine, tangent, secant, cosecant, cotangent are crucial because when you cover derivatives and integrals (major part of Calculus overall), it definitely asks you to find the integral or derivative of these trig functions.These are very basic and as I stated, learn Pre Calc. If not, at least the trig functions, their degrees, values, and their graphs. When I took the AP Calc exam, multiple questions of trig functions came up. Logarithm rules are very useful to know too because log also comes up on the test.Honestly, Pre Calc isn’t that hard. I learned it within 3 weeks while learning the second semester of Algebra 2. It was hard work and I dedicated many hours into it (basically my whole winter break). Just constantly work at it and practice.Also, for Calculus it is crucial that your algebra skills are good and do not do illegal math. Calculus is a lot of Algebra 2, so simply doing illegal math or not knowing how to manipulate an equation is a disadvantage and devastating to your performance.Study.If you don’t know how to study right now, learn how to because studying is important when it comes to Calculus.Once you start learning the material, make sure to look over the notes within 24 hours. Review and truly understand how the problem was solved. Ask classmates how they got their answer if you can’t figure it out, but really try to solve it yourself first. Don’t give up easily. Also, teach the material to other classmates because this truly demonstrates that you know the material and helps you develop your skills in math and your understanding of what you are teaching.Make study groups with other students. In fact, why not the whole class!? That’s what our class did about 4 months before the exam date. We stayed after school with our teacher (sometimes just ourselves) about 2-3 hours, 3 days out of the week. Sometimes even longer and for more days, especially the month before the exam. If you are self studying, then I suggest go to teacher or someone who knows the subject for help.Study GuideMake a quick study guide. Here are different ways you can do thisA paper or two going over the main idea of the notes, concepts, and those juicy problems. I kept this in a binder so it was all organized. Making it colorful helps (:Having flashcards of main concepts, rules, and theorems are very helpful for quick review and self quizzing. Though there are many main concepts, rules, and theorems, so have those flashcards ready!Have a little journal and write the main ideas, theorems and rules in there. This is easily portable and great to take with you anywhere you go, thus easier to study.I tried all of these, but I prefer the 1st the most. The other methods I borrowed from classmates who were very successful in the class. You can always customize this to your preference.Correction BinderHave a binder with all of your quizzes and exams and redo every problem that you got wrong and seriously question why you got it wrong. Was it a silly mistake? Do you keep making these silly mistakes? Watch out for those because that can separate you from passing.This also really helps when studying for a midterm or chapter test.HomeworkIt is important that you do all of your homework and make sure it is correct. Ask other classmates how they solved the problems because there are multiples ways to solve them. Maybe their perspective is much simpler and easy to understand.If your teacher doesn’t already give you guys challenging problems, look up some. Don’t just do a couple, but many. This is what truly helped me because once the exam came, the “challenging” problems were not that challenging. Make sure you get those juicy problems that look daunting. They may make you want to run, but after you solve them, it feels so rewarding (:Months BeforeIt’s important to really prepare for the exam months before. Review your notes, homework, frq, any challenging problems, etc. Make sure you understand it and not to confuse that for memorizing.Split up the work throughout the months prior to the exam so you don’t overwork yourself. Master derivatives, integrals, tabular problems, area, volume, and cross section, omg that funnel problem of year 2016, graphical analysis, implicit differentiation, particle motion, rates, slope filed and differential equations. These are all important. Basically all from tabular to differential equations are topics covered in the frq.I would say even start learning how to solve the frq that cover derivatives once you know how to do derivatives. Most of the frq involve derivatives, so check out which you can go over with what you know.FRQMany students can easily ace the multiple choice section of the AP Calc AB exam, but what gets many is the free response question. Go on college board or just google all of the frq available and solve them all, or at least most. I did most of the frq, and it TREMENDOUSLY helped me out. Do it.If you can’t figure out how to do them, then go on YouTube and type in the year for the ap calc frq. Make sure to try solving the problem yourself first, and then watch the video(s).Ex: 2008 ap calculus ab frq #5This is a large chunk of your score. I know that they’re changing the exam this year, but I’m not sure exactly what, so look it up.Practice ExamsSet up multiple practice exams before the actual exam. You can get this from online sources, practice exam books, and such. Spread out the dates that you’ll do this and don’t do it one day after the other. I’d give about 2 weeks to see how you have progressed, or not. Or adjust it to your taste. It’ll help you see what you need help on, what areas you do well in, and what to study.First, you can do the practice exam to see the questions and the structure of the test. After that one or on your 3rd practice, I suggest you fully do a mock exam. Go in a quiet area where you can do the full exam without distractions and have it set up exactly the way you would in the actual exam. Time yourself the way they have it set up and take breaks the way the actual exam does it. Use your calculator only on the calculator sections. Pace yourself. This will help you become more comfortable when you actually get graded on it.CalculatorKnow how to reset it in case it might be acting weird. Have a spare if you can, or ask a teacher if they have an extra one that you can borrow during the exam. Have extra batteries in case it might die.Know the quick tricks and how to use your calculator because you really need to know how for a good portion of the exam.Here’s an obvious, but important one: make sure your calculator is approved.Positive MentalitySeriously, don’t psych yourself out. I opened that test booklet and freaked out completely even though it was a simple derivative… It probably did mess me up on some problems. Just have confidence throughout the whole test and never doubt yourself. Never doubt yourself. Period.Walk into that exam room and know you are going to get a 5. Nothing less because you have been practicing all along throughout the school year.This is what helped me get a 4 on the exam. I could have gotten a 5 if I had buckled down a little more and didn’t freak out during the test. Relax, and also remember to enjoy the ride. Calculus is truly amazing and fun!Have fun in the process, work hard, and good luck :D

They're a mixed bag in my opinion. I'll comment only on ones I personally took as a high schooler preparing to go into a biomedical engineering major. I'll address how I liked it and a bit of how it compares to what it technically replaces, if I can.AP Calculus BC- I sort of liked it. I never had particularly loved math, but this class was the one to show me why it would be important to me as my first calculus experience. I found it cool that we could derive so many things just by knowing a little calculus- it's an extremely liberating math to know. You can just look at a curve and think of its approximate slope without realizing it afterward, and my teacher was great at instilling this wonder in us. This is a slightly odd class to compare to college equivalent, though. See, calc 1 and 2 are not quite as standardized as one may think. Yes, calc 1 has limits, definition of derivatives, derivative rules, maybe a little optimization problems, L’Hopital’s rule, and ends with introducing integration in 99% of colleges. Yet only recently did AP Calculus AB add L’Hopital’s rule, yet actually covers application problems more than my calc 1 retake. (Yes, I actually took BC which always had L’Hopital’s rule, but I'm assuming AB was similar for this for application). Calc 1 at my college was a bit more rigorous in the questions we were expected to do for the midterm/final. As for Calc 2, which I also retook, the retake I did was specifically for engineering majors so I can't say applications were lacking at all - it was the main difference between normal Calc 2 and engineering Calc 2. Engineering calc 2 was possibly a bit harder than the calc 2 material of BC, yet also didn't go over the same things. Calc BC covers polar coordinates unlike the college class, but the college class covered hyperbolic trig functions and trig substitution integration. So skipping it would have led to a slight gap in knowledge in this case. But most of the integration techniques standard to calc 2(integration by parts, u substitution) were covered well in both classes. Infinite series convergence tests were probably slightly better covered in the college class. But overall, I would say you can reasonably skip both calc 1 and 2 if you can do well on the test - most of both retakes were review to me after getting calc BC, honestly. Just make sure you're really solid in it before going to multivariable, or it will not be pleasant.AP Computer Science- This was a pretty good one. It can be a bit hard to learn programming, but having the high school setting was helpful in a way you would never have in college. I never had to do much outside class because we got to do the projects in class, where we had the teacher right there. So any time I was stuck, I could just raise my hand and get it. I mean, yeah, office hours in college are a bit similar, but high school teachers are still more likely to hold your hand through it. In the end I proudly walked out with a 4 on the test and was more than prepared to skip the intro CS class in college if I had just gotten the required 5. As my first CS exposure, it was also good for teaching me how to learn programming languages that look strange, which was good for when I needed to use MATLAB to do a non-trivial curve fit problem on a BME problem set lately and I didn't know MATLAB at all beforehand. It was very good at what it did, and definitely fairly substitutes for a college intro CS class (I took both, so I can compare). The only bad thing is that we're not necessarily asked to do as hard projects as college may ask and it's in Java. I love you, Java, but you're not user friendly at all.AP physics 2 - not as good to me. It was a bit too disorganized as it tried to teach a little of fluid mechanics, thermodynamics, electromagnetism, special relativity, and waves and optics, all only assuming algebra and geometry, no calculus. Not entirely worthless(some of it helped me a little in freshman physiology and calculus based mechanics), but it won't be much help for physics for engineering majors in college. Calculus based mechanics had almost nothing to do with its topics, save for the small bit of heat engines we did at the end, because we already learned the relevant high school mechanics earlier. Even so, AP physics 1,(which I skipped because it's similar to my honors high school physics), doesn't do the calculus out need to really do mechanics well. No algebra based class will ever be good enough for engineers who need mechanics when Newton invented calculus expressly so he could do mechanics. It's darn good it's not allowed to be used to place out of mechanics. As such, it's electromagnetism was also a joke compared to my current electromagnetism course. I mean, yes, mine requires multivariable calculus, but that's exactly the point. You can't teach electromagnetism right without a good understanding of vector fields, cross products and dot products, and hopefully some line and surface integrals so you can do Maxwell's equations. Basically, multivariable is indispensable to really getting it. Honestly, it's electromagnetism was such a joke most of this semester is pretty much new to me. It didn't teach me much of anything. So while it was lightly interesting, it's not really AP in the sense of really being comparable to my college physics classes. I feel the physics C sequence that does use calculus probably is far better (my college does accept those).AP US history- this was pretty decent. If you could do well in this, you will probably always be able to discuss U.S history pretty intelligently. It's good at actually making you think about the events and why they happened, and I'd say roughly comparable to college history. Now I never strictly took my university's history 101, but I am taking a 1000 level “History of American Capitalism” class right now, which goes over pretty much the same history but with a slightly more focused view on economics. APUSH required less reading of primary sources by a good bit, but understanding why these sources matter is a skill I transferred from APUSH. That, and the experience of doing the essay portion of the APUSH exam made preparing for the essay question midterm much easier. It's good at teaching the same things you'd learn in college history, overall.AP US Government- this was nice. It was good at getting across politics in this country. If you walked in with no political science, government, or civics knowledge and left with a 5 on the exam, trust me, you are more than civically aware, you can talk better about politics than probably half the people around you(unless your circles are very well informed). The only sad part is my college gives no credit at all for it… :(. I've never taken a really comparable class, though.Overall, I feel the AP classes I've taken are pretty solid as replacements for the corresponding intro level classes. The main exception is AP Physics 1/2 in the sense that they are not really comparable to what you'll need for calculus based physics.