<p>Hey everyone, alas I am approaching senior year. I cannot believe I will be in college in just over a year. Well I kind of need a strong finish with my first semester GPA and SAT II's to ensure myself college admission to the school of my choice. Anyway I need great prep books for the following AP's and SAT II's:</p>
<p>SAT II's:</p>
<p>World History: I desperately need to retake this one from the end of sophmore year where I got a 690(strange considering the 5 on the AP exam). I hear that Kaplan is the best, but I dont need some small crap prep book. Im willing to put the work in as long as I can get that 750 +. </p>
<p>U.S History: I really loved AP US and I think I got a 5 on this exam. I have both the 5 practice tests from Sparknotes and Amsco, but if there is an SAT II specific book that is great some imput would be apreciated. </p>
<p>AP Classes:</p>
<p>Calc AB: I have absolutely no idea how I should go about preparing for this exam on my own. Any info that may be of use is apreciated. </p>
<p>English Literature: I have already taken AP Eng. Lang, but if there is a good prep book with a lot of good MC practice that would be nice. </p>
<p>U.S and comparative gov: Is REA good for this? Or is there something better?</p>
<p>Macro and Micro Econ: Any knowledge on how to prep would be nice</p>
<p>Art History: Havent seen any good prep books for this one, if there is anything I can use as an aid to help myself and my first year teacher I would like to know about it.</p>
<p>US Gov Pol: Princeton Review is an excellent book for review. That and just watching the news sometimes will score you a five.</p>
<p>Macro / Micro Econ: Buy both Barron's and Princeton Review. Neither alone is spectacular, but they both have different areas of strength and thus form a complete package.</p>
<p>Edit: For any APs you want extra practice on, I <em>highly</em> recommend purchasing previously</a> released exams. They help a lot in knowing exactly what topics are emphasized, how the exam flows, and what the graders are thinking.</p>
<p>Self studying macro and micro is definately possible, but before you decide to do so, check with some of the schools that you are considering and see what credit you will get and if it will satisfy any requirements for your potential major. If the course will simply give you "elective" credit, then there's no reason to self study it unless you're really interested in the subject. Both Macro and Micro are normally taught as semester courses in most high schools, so the material in each is less than in other AP classes. I took a Macro class and found it very easy. However, theres a lot of math and logic behind economics and people who really didn't like those areas had trouble in macroeconomics.</p>
<p>For Macro and Micro, I went with the Princeton Review and Kaplan (Princeton Review is better, but if you can get both from a library or something it's helpful to have a supplement). It's very possible to self-study, even easy - I basically did it in a night.</p>
<p>I've heard that the College Board is changing the structure of Comp Gov, so this might have completely changed. However, when I took the test (another self-study), the multiple choice was very narrowly focused on the "core governments" in the AP syllabus: the US, Great Britain, France, Russia and the old USSR, and China. The essays required somewhat broader knowledge, but a few allowed you to just derive stuff from data provided. If you read the international news section of the paper, or something like The Economist every week, it's a pretty easy test.</p>
<p>These are the following changes, according to the CollegeBoard:</p>
<p>[ul]
[<em>]a greater emphasis on conceptual and thematic analysis
[</em>]a change in the country focus, moving to coverage of six core countries (Britain, China, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria, and Russia) albeit in slightly less factual depth; and
[li]a new emphasis on themes such as globalization, democratization, political change, public policy, and citizen-state relations.[/ul]</p>[/li]
<p>They basically want to make it more like a traditional college course; some universities refused to accept the old exam for credit, saying it wasn't aligned with the curriculum.</p>