Hello all,
I am going into my sophomore year, and I am wondering if anyone can give me advice as to how I can prepare for taking Calc 1? I was going to buy an AP book, but I am not even sure whether I would benefit more from looking at the AB or BC book? Anyone have general advice that could help me better prepare for taking calc? I am so bad at math, I need all the help I can get.
These on-line placement tests can help you find out what algebra, geometry, and trigonometry topics you need to review before taking calculus:
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/rur/rurci3.cgi
http://math.tntech.edu/e-math/placement/
https://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/placement-exam
Here are online precalculus textbooks:
http://www.opentextbookstore.com/precalc/
http://www.stitz-zeager.com/
If you know the precalculus stuff well and want to preview calculus, here is an online calculus textbook:
http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-001-calculus-online-textbook-spring-2005/textbook/
The AP book may or may not be helpful. Some math classes in college are structured similarly to the AP curriculum; some aren’t - though a different perspective might be useful. If you do decide to buy the AP book (Barron’s is good for Calc), you should probably be fine with AB, depending on the school. AB usually seems to correlate with Calc 1 and BC with Calc 2, give or take a few concepts. I always recommend KhanAcademy’s videos. You should also definitely review your algebra 2 and some trig. Calculus is not that bad - I personally found it to be substantially easier than trig (but YMMV, and it does depend on the instruction).
There is currently a free online course going on that teaches Pre-University Calculus. All you’d have to do is enroll in the course (free, just click enroll) and then you’ll begin leaning the topics. Khan Academy also have pre-calculus material that could assist you. The links provided by the users are also great. 
Khan Academy helped me tremendously.
You’ll be better served by an indepth review of pre-calc (namely, FUNCTIONS) and trig (the identities come back with a vengeance). Calc 1 is relatively “easy” because it gives you the building blocks for the rest of the series (taking derivatives, the fundamental theories of calculus, and integrals).
keep a precalculus book around just in case, and keep all the notes you have from your previous math class(es)
Thanks everyone!