<p>I looked at the consolidated book list and it's quite confusing because people are making their own lists and there's a "master list" which is telling me opposite things. I would read "Barrons is the best book for ____" but a couple pages later I would see "Barrons is not the best book for that."</p>
<p>So here's a list of tests I am planning on taking. I provided a brief summary of how my classes are so I can have accurate suggestions for books.</p>
<p>CALCULUS AB - The teacher is really nice and everyone loves him to death, but he says he hasn't had a student with a 5 since 1992. I'm not sure if he was serious or not. The way he teaches the class is he shows us shortcuts and ignores the definitions of theorems and concepts. He just skips over them and goes to the actual math parts. When we take tests, we are allowed one page of notes, and even an extra trigonometry sheet... and while that's great for the CLASS, I know it's not going to help for the actual AP test. Everyone thinks his class is hard but I think it's really easy; I always get 100% on his tests. I don't want his "easy" class to mislead me into thinking the AP test is easy, considering some of our top students never got 5s. </p>
<p>ENGLISH LITERATURE - I'm not sure about this one. The teacher's been teaching for 9 years; the class before our's got an 80% passing rate on the test. He keeps relating books to philosophy, and it confuses the hell out of us but it's entertaining. He sounds like a good teacher- he doesn't hesitate to point out the flaws of our essays. And we do go over literary elements in depth I guess. I'm not an English person though; I feel like I'll need extra extra time to study for the test. I got a 4 in English Language but I thought the test was so hard. </p>
<p>STATISTICS - We're using the new 2010 version of the STATS: MODELING THE WORLD book. It makes everything seem really simple and I don't quite like it. We are told to take notes on the book but there's nothing to take notes on. The teacher makes every explanation really simple. It's her first year teaching Statistics too, so she's learning how to teach it as we go on. I don't like it. </p>
<p>PSYCHOLOGY - That's what I want to major in. My school doesn't have an AP Psychology. We have a regular Psychology class but that's the same period as Calculus. So I took Calculus instead. Which means I'm self-studying for Psychology. I took an Abnormal Psychology class in a community college over the summer-- it was really interesting. I feel like I could just sit down and read a study guide for that book because that stuff really interests me.</p>
Since you are taking some version of the class, buying Larson is probably unnecessary. Definitely check out the two free texts, especially for proofs. You will get a more rigorous understanding of the material.</p>