<p>Guys what do you think is the best book to use if you wish to study AP CHemistry on your own?</p>
<p>Don't use Barron's. I used it last year to prepare for the exam while taking the class, several important formulas are wrong, the most notable one which I remember was the slope of a line.</p>
<p>PR is always (most always) a good choice. That's what I used.</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Ditto on HiWei. I used PR for all my APs...and it made life SO much simpler. However, use the old AP free responses from apcentral.collegeboard.com and if you are self-studying, do them all and look for patterns. Old multiple-choice tests don't help much if they are older than 5 years old, because they changed the test format.</p>
<p>Textbook: "Chemistry" 6th ed. by Zumdahl
Crambook: Princeton Review</p>
<p>The PR cram book might not be too much help unless you have something to supplement it, though. It's a good review, but you can't learn everything you need to know from it. The ARCO cram book, if you don't want to purchase an actual textbook, is better to use to learn the material.</p>
<p>I would also recommend zumdahl as the textbook. I would, however, recommend ARCO and Cliffs as the review books. They helped me get a 5 on the ap test.</p>
<p>for textbook: i liked Kotz.
as for crambooks, I did NOT like Kaplans, just fyi.
good luck!</p>
<p>When you guys are talking about Zumdahl's Chem textbook, are you only speaking about his sixth edition (Steven S. Zumdahl and Susan L. Zumdahl, Chemistry, 6th Edition, Houghton-Mifflin, 2003)?</p>
<p>Zumdahl's is really good textbook wise and PR is good too, what does everyone think about McGraw-Hill's 5 steps to a 5 for Chem?</p>
<p>At my school, anytime somebody says Zumdahl, everybody around that knows what the person is talking about goes: "ZUMDAHL!!"</p>
<p>It's hilarious...</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Zumdahl is just a horrible book..
I recommend Brown-Lemay</p>
<p>The majority of AP Chem classes use Zumdahl; that must be something...</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>Zumdahl isn't bad, but my teacher would have preferred Chang. I don't know much about the Chang book, but I liked Zumdahl fine. I learned the material well. Don't buy Kaplan or Barron's for review. They are much too in depth and at times incorrect. PR is short and to the point.</p>
<p>I'd just use Zumdahl, and the FR problems CollegeBoard has on their site. For preparation, my AP Chem teacher had us just do tons and tons of these FR problems, and then grade ourselves. He has a 60% rate of getting 5s in his classes. I don't even end up using review books anyway...they're pretty useless unless they summarize the info in a nice graphical manner or something (this usually only works for Stat). </p>
<p>I'll note that I found PR really not helpful. But that is just my experience. Barron's has lots of wrong answers, and is unbelievably hard and discouraging.</p>
<p>Zumdahl cant explain.
He uses too many complex words and doesnt start from the basics..</p>
<p>Quite the generalization there Variance.</p>
<p>MANY high school AP Chem teachers use Zumdahl... Why are they using a book that can't explain?</p>
<p>I had Zumdahl 5th edition, Brown-Lemay, Chang, and one more by an author called Soderberg or something like that?</p>
<p>Anyways, I found Zumdahl to be the most thorough textbook and easiest to follow. Princeton Review was a good book to supplement/summarize the material in Zumdahl. Good luck.</p>
<p>Zumdahl cant explain.
He uses too many complex words and doesnt start from the basics..</p>
<p>I hadn't taken science for a year, and had never touched Chemistry. I studied the book, and was top of the class and got an 800 on the SAT II. I'm not flaunting; that's a horrible generalization. </p>
<p>Not only do high schools use Zumdahl, most colleges do as well. I know for sure that almost all of the UCs use Zumdahl - even Berkeley. </p>
<p>Besides, the first chapter is stoichiometry. How is that not basic?</p>
<p>I tried to study it very quickly using barrons. biggest mistake of my life, very boring, very stupid extraneous information, and very very slow. I swear the amount of useless info in that book should classify it as a textbook</p>
<p>Our class used Brown-Lemay since my teacher knows Lemay (he's a professor at the University of Nevada, Reno). It was pretty good, but I didn't use it to cram for the AP test. I used PR.</p>
<p>ZUMDAHL yo. Get the oldest one u can find. mine had like a green/blue cover. </p>
<p>It saved my ass on acid/base titrations (like how to do a weak base with strong acid). I thot it was SUPER CLEAR. It's examples in that section were awesome!!</p>
<p>I say get Zumdahl. PR for a quick review. Then do all the practice FRs on CB web site. And go to your local book store and use other books (like Kaplan) to take practice tests. I think PR is too easy and simplified on the practice tests (well the whole book is, but it's good cuz it covers the basics u need to know, which is important). I''d say that soudns like the best combination. You can try Barrons. But it's huge, and goes into things that won't even be touched on the exam. Barron's tend to do that...</p>