AP Calculus Book Reviews
AP Calculus: Supplemental Study Guides
5 Steps to a 5: AP Calculus AB
This is a solid review of the course and our top choice to use as a supplement for general studying. It includes example questions, graphing calculator images for reference, and cumulative review problems. The question formatting is also geared towards calculator and non-calculator questions, which is a great lead-up to the AP exam.
Princeton Review AP Calculus: AP Premium Prep
This book offers a review of concepts as well as example problems within the text, problem sets, and end of chapter problem sets. It also has 5 practice tests in the book and 2 online practice tests. The formatting of the book and questions is top-notch, but the content isn’t quite as strong as the 5 Steps to a 5 text.
Mathboat AP Calculus AB Lecture Notes
Although the material is presented in an easily digested format (power point slides, printed out), the format of the book seems rather limiting. This may be valuable if you don’t have a solid AP teacher or want to have a set of bullet points to digest or study with, but likely isn’t going to be your go-to supplementary book, especially not if you’re looking for practice.
Barron's AP Calculus Premium: With 12 Practice Tests
This has 4 practice tests each for Calculus AB and BC in the book, with an additional 2 practice tests for each course online. Some of the reviews explained that the online tests were difficult to use and/or had errors in the guide.
Real AP Calc AB & BC Crash Course
We would consider this book more of a “review lite”. It has good content but dense text, so it may be good for students who are looking for a deep review versus quick study material.
AP Calculus: Practicing Skills
This is our top recommendation for students looking for a lot of multiple choice practice questions. While CollegeBoard offers a wide variety of free-response questions on their website, this book really fills in the gaps for multiple choice problems. As an additional bonus, the workbook gives you enough space to work on the questions too.
Essential Calculus Skills Practice Workbook with Full Solutions
This book has more hands-on problems, with a focus on the technical how-to’s of Calculus. It doesn’t have conceptual review, but its strength is that it gets straight to the point. It’s mainly to be used as practice to ensure problem type mastery, not as a full guide for the exam.
The Humongous Book of Calculus Problems
This book has 1000 solved Calculus problems. There isn’t space to solve them in the book, but it has a wide range of practice. For students who can resist the urge to look directly at the solution below to attempt the questions on their own, this works out great, though I know of many more students who would jump right into the solution (which is literally on the line below the question) and then feel like they know how to solve the problem without going through the uncomfortable but necessary work of attempting to solve on their own.
Schaum's 3000 Solved Problems in Calculus
This book offers a ton of solved Calculus practice problems - 3000 to be exact. It also doesn’t have space to solve them within the book. One thing to look out for in this book is the potential for errors in their solutions. So it’s great for practice, but always double-check.
This book may seem helpful, but it over-complicates a lot of the concepts in Calculus. It’s formulas were more often than not much more complicated while also being less well-explained than the other books. We wanted to put it on this list as a warning that the above textbooks will be much more helpful than this one.
