Click here to go to the NEW College Discussion Forum

since the AP Calculus Test is less than two months away, i feel a thread like this will be helpful for me and many others.

feel free to post any past expierences and questions.

i'll start it off:

can somebody give me a crash course on Calculus Vectors? (ie atan, anorm, speed, ect.)

By Dwaynehoover (Dwaynehoover) on Tuesday, March 18, 2003 - 11:33 pm: Edit

my school's calculus program works like this...they split the Calculus program into 3 semesters...A,B,C..so you don't really take AB or PC per se.

I'm in sophomore year spring semester taking A and next year i will take B fall then C spring...

Which is harder, the AB or BC exam? and also, what is this AB subscore thing for the bc exam? DOes that mean that the BC exam tests AB material?

Should I review my A material from my sophomore spring and take the AB junior year or BC?

....thanks

By Themoose07 (Themoose07) on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 - 03:32 pm: Edit

From what I understand, Calculus A is actually a pre-calc review, Calculus B is 1st semester college calc, and Calculus C is 2nd semester calc. The BC exam was pretty hard but we didn't get much past the A material. I got a 1 on the BC exam but the AB subscore was 3. Yes, they do test AB material but only because BC builds upon it, and they would have to test both semester's skills to justify a year's credit.

By Heatwave345 (Heatwave345) on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 - 04:10 pm: Edit

BC is two semesters of calculus
AB is one semester of calculus

The BC test covers all AB material plus some more.

By Dwaynehoover (Dwaynehoover) on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 - 05:31 pm: Edit

Ok i see, so it would probably be advantageous to take the AB if you had the choice (which i don't)...

and to correct Themoose...you do not study Derivatives or Integrals in precalculus...

By Crammer (Crammer) on Wednesday, March 19, 2003 - 09:01 pm: Edit

I took Calc two years ago so I probably can't help with specifics, but I had a great teacher and we knew the material really well for BC. The way it works is that AB is a full year course of calculus. BC simply adds some more complicated topics onto the AB base. I guess that sort of makes the BC test a more-than-one-year course usually crammed into a single year. The extra topics of BC I'd guess are about 1/3 the size of AB. That is to say if your calculus book has 20 chapters on the AB material I would say that the BC material is less than 10 chapters worth of topics. However, the BC material is considerably more difficult and definitely builds on the AB material. The concepts are much more complex. If you spend an entire semester on the BC material you should be able to handle it pretty well though.
The BC AP test is roughly 2/3 AB and 1/3 BC material. I think about 2/3 the multiple choice questions are AB and 1/3 are BC material. If I remember correctly, 2 out of the six questions on the free response section concentrated on BC material. However, they do not seperate the sections so it's best to know all the material well. However, they do grade the material sperately. I know someone who got a 5 on the BC section and a 4 on the AB. It all depends on what you know better.
I disagree wholeheartedly with dwaynehoover. If you can handle it at all it is definitely best to take the BC exam. Colleges recognize it so much more. Huge numbers of high school students take AB, much fewer take the BC. If you are thinking about it at all go for the BC, because you will still have the AB subscore. Because of this fact it becomes much easier to score well. If you look at the breakdowns, you can see that many more students get 5s on the BC than the AB. This is partly due to the afct that more qualified students take BC, but you can also get more questions wrong and still get a 5 on the BC test than on the AB.
If you guys have any more questions I can probably help you out, I got 5s on BC and AB and my teacher was amazing so I really understood it pretty thoroughly.

By Heatwave345 (Heatwave345) on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 09:57 pm: Edit

can you help me with vectors in calculus?
*look at 1st post*

By Jk9903 (Jk9903) on Thursday, March 20, 2003 - 11:52 pm: Edit

What about series ;-).

By Heatwave345 (Heatwave345) on Friday, March 21, 2003 - 08:26 pm: Edit

bump

c'mon guy ask/answer questions.
only 2 more months!!!

By Heatwave345 (Heatwave345) on Friday, March 21, 2003 - 08:26 pm: Edit

guys*

By Texas137 (Texas137) on Friday, March 21, 2003 - 08:49 pm: Edit

go to http://www.moems.org/calc.htm to buy a book with all the calculus free response questions and solutions for both the AB and BC exams for the past 10 years.