I believe that if you have a plan for how to study, you can be very well prepared for the AP Calculus AB and BC exams and get a 5, which should be your ultimate goal. I kind of just want everyone to get a 5 on this exam. If you want to reach out, probably just comment on one of my YouTube videos or hit me up on reddit, where I feel like I mostly just spam links to my videos, but I’m genuinely trying to help where I can!
There’s no substitute for actually learning the material! Before you dive in to study, definitely work through the material. Obviously I think the best way to do that is to work through my notes and their accompanying videos. You can find the AB notes here and the remaining BC notes here.
My class follows the assignments in the table below. (I’ve just kind of estimated due dates because I’m doing this generically for any year, but they always start in mid-February and go until right around the Friday before AP exams start.) There are a lot of assignments and it is a lot of work, but it’s worth it when most of the students get a 5 on the exam. You can download a copy of this assignment sheet here.
| Number | Assignment | Approximate Date |
| 1 | DemystMC: 1-29 | 2/17 |
| 2 | DemystMC: 30-48 | 2/23 |
| 3 | DemystMC: 49-65 | 2/27 |
| 4 | DemystMC: 66-85 | 3/01 |
| 5 | DemystMC: 86-103 | 3/03 |
| 6 | AP MC 2012 | 3/07 |
| 7 | DemystMC: 104-124 | 3/10 |
| 8 | DemystMC: 125-136 | 3/16 |
| 9 | DemystMC: 137-157 | 3/17 |
| 10 | Preparing Test 1 | 3/20 |
| 11 | AP MC 2013 | 3/22 |
| 12 | AP MC 2014 | 3/24 |
| 13 | Preparing Test 2 | 3/28 |
| 14 | Preparing Test 3 | 3/30 |
| 15 | DemystMC: 158-185 | 4/11 |
| 16 | Preparing Test 4 | 4/12 |
| 17 | Preparing Test 5 | 4/14 |
| 18 | AP MC 2015 | 4/18 |
| 19 | AP MC 2016 (ABCDE) | 4/20 |
| 20 | AP MC 2016 (ABCD) | 4/24 |
| 21 | Preparing Test 6 | 4/26 |
| 22 | AP MC 2017 | 4/28 |
| 23 | AP MC 2018 | 5/02 |
| 24 | AP MC 2019 | 5/04 |
If you’re in Calc BC, do everything for AB and then expand below for the list of additional assignments. I didn’t fill in dates for this because I don’t, strictly speaking, teach a Calc BC class. My students have already taken AB and we cover the BC stuff from September to December, and then we move on to multivariable calc. But they do take the BC exam, and these are the assignments I give them to get ready.
| Number | Assignment | Approximate Date |
| 25 | DemystMC BC: 1-14 | |
| 26 | Demyst BC: 1-11 | |
| 27 | DemystMC BC: 14-32 | |
| 28 | Demyst BC: 12-22 | |
| 29 | DemystMC BC: 33-43 | |
| 30 | Demyst BC: 23-31 | |
| 31 | DemystMC BC: 44-56 | |
| 32 | Demyst BC: 32-41 | |
| 33 | DemystMC BC: 57-69 | |
| 34 | Demyst BC: 42-58 | |
| 35 | DemystMC BC: 70-81 | |
| 36 | Demyst BC: 59-71 | |
| 37 | DemystMC BC: 82-88 |
Doing all of this is probably too much. If I had to choose anything to skip, it would be the non-multiple choice problems, the ones labeled just Demyst BC. If you’re working hard at the FRQs you’ll get more than enough of that type of problem.
These all come from MasterMathMentor.com.
Students in my classes purchase review books every year and we work through them. There are two that I highly recommend, but they have a minimum order of 10 books so you’ll need a teacher to organize it. The first book is from Venture Publishing. I’ve only ever used the AB book but it’s outstanding. The other book that I use with my students taking the BC exam is from D&S Marketing. I’ve only ever used the BC book from here, but again, it’s outstanding. The books from both companies contain 6 practice exams.
These are the real deal tests from previous years. You can find the following officially released to the public exams: 1988, 1998, and 2012. There’s a pdf of exams from: 1969, 1973, 1985, 1988, 1993, 1997, and 1998. At some point you could buy the exams from 2003 and 2008 in paper format. From 2013-2016 you used to be able to get them on the AP Audit site in pdf form if you were an audit approved teacher. 2017-2019 are pre-loaded into AP Classroom so teachers can assign them. I do not distribute any copies of these exams, so don’t ask me!
You can substitute basically any practice exams with the ones that I’ve listed. For example, here’s a link to Amazon’s results for AP Calculus. Personally I’d buy (or look for versions of) Barron’s and Princeton Review. I also kind of recommend you consider checking out UWorld. They had a free thing one time right before the AP exam and I checked it out…it was very impressive. As someone who once got a copyright strike from the College Board, I’m not sure how UWorld’s content is allowed, but it’s very similar to the real thing.
I believe that review time in class is best spent working through past Free Response questions. You should do as many of them as possible. If time is short, don’t bother going back past 2016. If you have the time, I’d go all the way back to 2006. They move it from time to time, but here’s the College Board’s archive of the problems stretching back to 1998. (BC version here.) Also, the previous year’s questions can probably be found here. (BC here.) If they’re not at the links, you can find them by directly googling the year.
I have made video solutions to most of these FRQs. I highly recommend you check them out. Here’s a playlist. Here’s a sorted spreadsheet of them.
The Demystifying AP Calculus stuff is sorted by topics, which is great. You have to know the name of the thing you’re not good at so you can find more problems and resources to practice and improve. Here are (most?) of the things that I’ve made for AP review.