I’ve been recently thing of taking AP Chemistry my sophomore year becuase my biology teacher recommended that I do it since I’m good at math and science. I would have to skip Honors Chemistry and go to AP Chemistry. Since AP Chemistry goes from what I’d taught in regular Chemistry I need to self study for next year. I wanted to know what things I should learn to be ready for AP Chemistry. What are good resources to self study it? Thanks in advance.
My sister did this and it took up ALL of her summer. Unless you have time to go over every single topic with understanding, DON’T do this. She was very disciplined about studying and used every resource imaginable.
I’m in H Chem as a Junior (school program has a weird science sequence). Having a teacher lets you ask questions beyond the course’s scope if you want to do this out of interest. Also, you’ll retain more of the course info for college by taking AP Chem later. Unless your school has a post-AP course, you’ll likely forget all the material after not using it for 2 years.
I am surprised that you are allowed to self-study. Where i live it is required to take a summer class to skip a course. I know our ap chem teacher, and they said that people who skip hn/regular chem have a harder time because they do not have the lab experience (a huge part of AP chem), so they often don’t do as well as they could.
I don’t recommend self studying a lab science, because you’ll miss all the labs! Take Honors Chem next year (if you want to double up, take honors physics or AP physics 1 too), and take AP Chem junior year.
I’m self-studying AP chem now without any previous chemistry experience. I’m taking regular chemistry (school doesn’t have honors) concurrently. It’s difficult but definitely doable.
I’m in AP Chem right now, and I’ve had a lot of success partly due to the insane amount of effort I put in, but also because I took a normal chemistry class the year before and really mastered the basics. Whatever you do, make sure you master the basics (I would think that’s chapter 1-4). Take Honors Chemistry first, and then AP Chem the following year. I don’t care what any teacher says. There’s maybe one or two students a year at my school who jump to AP and succeed. That being said, they are required to put 5x as much effort into learning even the easiest of chapters. For example, orbitals, periodicity and gas laws are just three of many topics covered in Chemistry. These come back as chapters in AP Chem in my school. For most of us who took a chem class before, these units were simply review and/or grade booster/cushion units. For one of my friends who skipped straight to AP, these units were just as hard as learning any other unit in AP Chem. You’ll learn a lot more taking a chemistry course beforehand, even if it ends up being amazingly easy. Like I said before, no matter what you do, master the basics. Understand why the periodic table trends are the way they are, etc. Good luck!
Seems like there’s so many people advising against it, but if you really really think you can do it, then do it. If you’re good at science and math, then AP Chemistry won’t be that hard. It has a reputation for being hard, but I’m in AP Chemistry and I know several people who did amazing in AP Chemistry. For us in our school, we just build off of our knowledge that we learned from honors chemistry the previous year. The teacher goes over each topic, but more in depth. I forgot some of my honors chemistry stuff, but it’s still fine because we will go over it eventually before the AP test. Study lots of chemistry. Make sure you cover all the topics if you really want to skip! It won’t be easy without any previous chemistry background though.
I took college prep chemistry as a sophomore last year. I took ap chem this year, and for me the only things we learned in cp chem that we’re learning in ap chem is …
Naming formulas
Writing equations and different reactions
Net ionic equations
Orbitals
Quantum numbers
Lewis structure
Stoichiometry
And some more …
In my school college prep chemistry prepares students for AP chem, but it’s not necessary. Some kids take AP chem with taking just a regular chemistry class prior.
My CP chem teacher actually has a good amount of videos on YouTube and he could help you “Mr Hren chemistry” Almost all of his videos are about things that are learned later in AP chemistry. Just a recommendation