Barron's AP Calculus

This book has its pros and cons. On the one hand, it has an incredible amount of practice problems (organized by chapter) and is well organized in that topics and practice problems specified for "just BC students" are well marked(However, arc length is on the AB syllabus, not just BC as this book says it is). The book also provides four practice tests for both AB and BC, more than you will find in any other Calculus prep book.

However, many of the practice problems found in the "end of the chapter practice problems," as well as in the practice tests, are not representative of questions that have come up on previous AP exams. In my AP Calc class, we did every college board released multiple choice section since 1978 as well as every free-response question given in the past 10 or so years. Though the practice tests given in this book are okay, and will provide good practice, it is evident Barrons did not do enough research into the AP Calculus exams themselves. Many of...Read more

I used this book solely for the multiple-choice practice problems, not the review or tests, so I can only vouch for the MC problems. The coverage of topics is both broad and deep, with well over 500 problems of varying difficulty. Taking the AP Exam, I felt confident, prepared, and familiar with every problem type. The only complaint I have is the lack of fully developed solutions to the MC problems. The short one- or two-line explanations were always enough to answer any of my questions, but for those struggling with the concepts, they may prove inadequate.

I didn't take AP Calculus BC, so I can only speak for the AP Calculus AB students.

I actually didn't like this book because the questions are super difficult in comparison to the AP exam, and the answer explanations are only decent at best. Some students actually like practicing with harder questions because it'll make the actual exam look easy. However, there are errors in this book, which could make it even more frustrating.

However, I do agree that this book does provide the great multiple-choice practice questions in comparison to the other prep books out there. I didn't find the free-response questions as helpful. I also found the Princeton Review to be a great source for practice Calculus questions. If you can excel while doing these problems, you know you'll do excellent on the exam. I would still practice with actual released multiple-choice and free-response questions from the Collegeboard though. This book would be a good supplement to another...Read more