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To future Calc students,

I’m not really sure if any words of mine will be able to help you on your way to a high score on the Calc AP, I’ll still try though. The one thing that you need to know is that the AP exams aren’t really that hard, and you only need about 68% to get a 5. They are however, going to be harder than any other math exam you’ve ever taken. The most important thing is to practice. To be completely honest, my Calc exam was hard but I made it even harder than it was by not doing my work. There are two prep strategies that I suggest: always try to have a strategy for solving every type of problem, now I know this sounds obvious but it helps if you have a game plan when you come across questions that are asking for some odd or difficult solution. Second, focus on what you know is going to be on the exam, for example, the free response section on my exam was very similar to all the practice AP exams that I took. The subject matter of the questions is always the same. The more you practice the free responses the better your chances are for a 5, because the multiple choice is mostly based on concepts and reasoning rather than just straight out calculations and you have a greater chance of doing well on the free response part than on the multiple choice (remember you don’t have to get all of them).

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