My APUSH teacher is way harder. We have to outline 4 chapters and few chapters outside the book. Also we have to do detailed Who/What/When/Where and Why/How for a huge list of vocab words. There might be more I haven’t checked recently. It will be worth it though:The kids that make it through his class have a 92% pass rate(3,4, or 5).
@kassh4 That’s an impressive pass rate. At least you know all that work is effective in scoring well on the exam. Some teachers at my school have less than 10% pass rates for APs 
.
@ZealousScholar You sure about 10%? That is WAY lower then the national averages. Also, maybe the reason the pass rate is so high is because so many people drop the class so by the end through “natural selection” only the kids that are ready are in the class. APUSH has the highest drop rate by far at my school.
At my school, you are not allowed to drop an AP class during the middle of the year
Our policy for any class is you can drop within 9 weeks of each semester after that you get a F in the class.
Anybody know what textbooks they’re going to use?
Yup we are using the Raymond Chang Ap Chem 8th edition.
I took AP Chem this school year (2015-2016) and I got a 5. I thought I could give yall some advice.
If you have a really bad teacher like I did, then this class will be mostly self-study. It sucks, but that’s just how it is. You really have to rely on yourself and the internet.
What I did was I watched videos, mainly Abigail Giordano’s AP Chemistry videos on youtube. She is AMAZING and will make literally anything click for you. I would really recommend watching her videos because they really helped me get a 5.
I would suggest you start studying for the exam in the last two weeks of March. It’s a lot of material to review and you need a lot of time. I watched Abigail’s videos, took notes on them, and did practice problems. For practice problems, use the ones that the college board has released. They are the best ones to use, because they reflect the problems you will see in May. Don’t go back any more than the year 2000, that’s just unnecessary. This all helped me to get a 5.
If the class starts to get tough, don’t give up. You will get your fair share of bad grades. It’s inevitable. AP Chem is not a hard class if you really apply yourself. If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Good luck to you all!
Regarding summer homework, I have a packet that we have to complete but we aren’t turning in. I think the first or second day of school we’re going to have a test on the packet and then a couple days later we’re taking an AP mock exam (which I’m kinda nervous about). Also our teacher is making us do research over summer for a project of choice so we could enter it into some district science fair.
I’m looking forward to the class since the teacher that teaches it was my Chemistry honors teacher and I’ve asked her a bunch of questions about the class.
Also is AP Chem a block period at anyone else’s school? It takes up two periods at mine and I was wondering if this is a regular thing.
It takes up two periods at my school also
I got a 5 for Chem this year. These are some tips.
- Make sure to master Atomic Structure + Bonding + Acid/Base – saw lots of Qs on this
- Princeton Review + Zumdahl (or Brown Lemay) = best combination
- Try out all released FRQs (1998~2015 thats what I did xD) and MCQs (ask your teacher for more recent ones - I tried all from 2002-2015).
- Labs are important. Watch videos on Youtube or look at articles on Google,
- NMSI AP Chem was really helpful. The lecture videos were really good too
- MUST WATCH
Good luck!!
Hi everyone! I’m new to this thread and I’m excited to be taking AP Chemistry next year. You all should probably memorize my username now, because you’ll be seeing it a lot over the course of next year.
I’ll just copy and paste something I posted on the High School Class of 2018 Thread.
This is the summer assignment information I received for AP Chemistry back in June:
We have to:
- Look Over a PowerPoint Presentation About Everything We Should've Covered Last Year (That Will Not Be Reviewed In Class) (I Already Did This)
- Look Over a 2nd PowerPoint Presentation About Things We Might Have Learned Towards The End of Last Year and Need To Review (This Will Be Reviewed in Class) (I Haven't Done This)
Note: In each PowerPoint, there are links to Quizlet quizzes my teacher makes in case we need some extra review as well as links to Khan Academy and Crash Course Chemistry videos.
We must also:
- Complete Formula Writing and Naming Practice Worksheet (This was one of my strongest areas in Chemistry, along with Solutions, so it should be easy)
- Complete The AP Chemistry Summer Packet Problems (As One Final Review of Last's Year Chemistry Skills)
The answers for the Formula Writing and Name Practice are online now, but the answers for the AP Chemistry Summer Packet Problems will be online one week before school starts. She will also put up online our “Year At A Glance” course calendar and outline which we’ll use to know what we’ll be learning and what labs we’ll be doing each quarter.
We’ll also be taking a graded diagnostic test during our first week of school to see where our strengths and weaknesses are.
We also must have all of our summer assignments done by the first day of school, ready to turn in for a grade. In addition to all of this, last school year, she, and the other AP Chemistry teacher, gave a letter to all of the Chemistry teachers to give to all of the students taking AP Chemistry next year. On it were two very motivating paragraphs and a list of things we HAVE to buy.
We must buy:
- A spiral-bound notebook which we'll use to write up our lab reports.
- An AP Chemistry Review Book! She highly recommends getting: The Princeton Review's Cracking The AP Chemistry Exam 2015. She told us to either get it online or from a book/textbook store and it should cost about $20.
- A graphing calculator
- Lastly, a large (3-inch) three-ringed with about 6 dividers and, for "The Chem Goddess's" class only, a 2nd spiral-bound notebook for our bell-ringers (warm-ups).
I lost my graphing calculator last year, so I had to use a more basic one for the rest of the year. Luckily, I was given a $50 Navy Federal Credit Union Gift Card, plus another $13, that I can use to buy a pretty cheap graphing calculator from Walmart right before the year starts. The letter says that “If these purchases cause undue financial stress, the school will be able to help out. Please speak to your AP Chemistry teacher at the start of the new school year.” I should be fine, though. I’ll probably go back-to-school after the first two days of school, just to make sure I get what I need, and get the spiral-bound notebooks. I already have dividers and binders from last year. I’ll probably order the AP Chemistry Review Book through Amazon.
It also says in the letter to “Please come to school on the first day prepared with your binder, loose-leaf paper in binder, graphing calculator, and COMPLETED summer assignment. We WILL be taking notes!!!”
We’ll also be using a couple of educational apps, that we’ll have to download on our phones, and websites to save time in class as the class is single-blocked.
We’ll be using:
Learnerator.com (The school will purchase the upgraded version)
Remind101 (Which a lot of my teachers last year used a way to remind students, through texts, about upcoming homework/project deadlines, tests, and quizzes.) (My Spanish and World History teachers used this religiously.) - Free (I’m pretty sure.)
EdPuzzle (For Online Chemistry Lectures) - Free
Socrative (To take practice tests and quizzes on.) - Free
So as you can see, the Chemistry program at our school almost seems state-of-the-art and challenging! I’m definitely going to enjoy it next year.
Looking forward to the class because my teacher is a mentor for international chemistry Olympiad students and I want to compete in that competition so he’ll be able to help me with the regionals and nationals part of Chemistry Olympiad
@ak2018 Wow! You sure have a lot to get through over the summer. I have used some of the resources, individually, such as Learnerator. Although, note that the Learnerator company was terminated and is now part of a new company called Albert.io . So I don’t know how that affects your school’s paid subscription.
For review books I’m not sure on why your teacher said PR 2015. I know the 2016 version had some errors but would definitely be fixed in the 2017 version --which will come out in less than a month.
Through research and recommendations, the best I’ve found were Princeton Review (2017) and 5 Steps to a 5 (2017).
Good luck throughout the year! I will also be on this thread a lot (mostly bc I made it lol). Hopefully all of us will do well on one of the most comprehensive and challenging AP courses.
Yo I’m new here too. I liked AP Bio more than I did regular Chem, but we’ll see how this class goes. I don’t have any summer homework here so that’s fun
@ZealousScholar Yeah, I definitely do. Considering the fact that last year Learnerator was used a lot in the AP Chemistry classes, we might not use it now. I actually just checked out the PR 2017 which somehow costs less than the PR 2016 and 2015 on Amazon. I emailed one of the AP Chem teachers and still haven’t gotten a reply. Good luck to you too and I will also be here a lot.
My AP Chemistry teacher just emailed me back and she said she’ll give me a PR 2016 Chemistry Textbook, once school starts, while I wait to buy for the 2017 edition. She asked how my summer was doing too. She’s so nice!
When does the 2017 edition come out anyway?
@ak2018 it’ll be available August 2nd, well at least to order online, so you might be able to get the book even before your school starts.