Ssp

<p>latindude, hope you don't mind me asking, but did you turn down ssp for another program?</p>

<p>After I took the Physics C practice multiple choice test, I decided to give up on E&M. Mechanics is just too hard so I decided to focus on that this year, and maybe I'll do E&M next year (which seems easier than Mechanics). I have to say, the multiple choice part of the pratice test I took was crazy hard >.> I expected something much easier. The free response seems relatively easy, but I'm not that familiar with rotational motion. I hope I can pull off a 5 tomorrow. =P</p>

<p>As for AP Bio, it's pretty easy. You don't really even need a teacher for it - like juzam_djinn said, it's just a lot of memorization. The problem with our class is that our teacher would assign like five to six chapters over a single weekend from our textbook, and it was way too much so nobody read the textbook. Also, we weren't exactly on schedule. We spent too much time on genetics, and because we used the last three weeks to do practice tests, we didn't get to cover Animal Form and Function (which is a major part of the exam) and Ecology. And the truth of the fact is, I never even touched my textbook after Genetics, which was first semester. Oh well. Thank God for Cliff's Notes. ^^</p>

<p>sure did djinn</p>

<p>sigh
too much time on genetics eh?
you should have taken the SAT II Bio yesterday
50+% on genetics!!!!
Princeton Review didn't prepare me for sh!t</p>

<p>Latindude...mind telling us which program you chose instead?</p>

<p>I took the AP exam today, and there certainly wasn't as much genetics as 50% =P</p>

<p>Oh, and Physics C's free response was brutal. >.></p>

<p>Holy crap, Physics C's free response was definitely brutal. THe multiple choice was nice and easy, lulling the taker into a false sense of confidence, and then WHAM! rearward penetration of a large scale. </p>

<p>I kept going between the three questions, working a bit on each one. The first one was knda easy, the second one was brutal, but i finally understood how to do it in the end, finally getting the answer that would enable me to answer two more parts (the weight + graph), but not having enough time to do them :(</p>

<p>the last question just plain stunk</p>

<p>yup, the SAT II bio had a ton of genetics, but AP Bio seemed to eschew that topic for more of those gay experiment questions</p>

<p>As a friendly reminder: "gay" is not an insult. Pointless, idiotic, or annoying might be what you meant. (I don't mean to attack you - when people do use "gay" to mean "stupid," they're not thinking at all about what it means, any more than we note that "deme" means neighborhood when we say "democracy." All the same, for those people who DO think of the actual meaning, it's pretty hurtful.)</p>

<p>Oh my goodness!!!! I haven't taken AP Physics C yet (I'm at ISEF right now, so I signed up for the late one...they have AP tests at ISEF but I figured it would be too stressful to do them in the same week). That freaks me out about the free response!!!!</p>

<p><em>goes and freaks out</em></p>

<p>How is E&M? I'm not quite as worried about mechanics...eek, though! Do you think the late test will be very different from the normal one? What topics do you think I should hit hard?</p>

<p>I took APUSH and it actually wasn't as bad as I suspected...I had barely any time at all to review the 1900s, so I was TERRIFIED the DBQ would be on something like Nixon or someone that I had no clue about...but instead it was from the revolutionary time period. That made me happy.</p>

<p>Rahrah is worried about the calc BC test, but she says the stat was easy.</p>

<p>All I can say is, I can't wait until next week is over...can't wait until SSP....</p>

<p>Calculus BC has a nice curve, and if you look at the grade distribution, 40% of the people who take that exam get 5's, so there shouldn't be too much to worry about. I self-studied Calc and even I'm pretty confident =P</p>

<p>Dmitriy_Y, so the Physics C free response was hard for you too? I took the international version, and the first two questions killed me. I couldn't do the graphs of either question and basically I didn't do anything for the second question. The third question was a bit better, thankfully =P The only part I didn't do for the third question was the last two parts. For the other questions, I didn't even answer half of it! So I guess I'm expecting a 4 for Physics C (since I think I did pretty well on the MCs too).</p>

<p>Oh, and according to my friend, E&M was easy especially compared to Mechanics, so review mechanics a lot. Do a lot of free responses. Time is very limited so the more practice you have, the faster you'll be able to do them. Don't worry about the multiple choice - all the prep books lead you into believing that the MCs are hard while they really aren't. The free response is the hard part.</p>

<p>40 percent get 5's on the bc???? what?!? are you serious?</p>

<p>Did they hit magnetism really hard on Physics C? Maxwell's equations? I haven't even really started reviewing E&M (I'm taking it next Thursday), and I still have to review oscillations, etc. I got a review book with 2 practice tests and lots of practice questions. Hopefully they'll help a lot. I really would like to get a 5, but I don't know if ithat will happen...</p>

<p>yea ton of people get 5's on calc, im betting you will get a 5 too rahrah</p>

<p>flierdeke-sorry if i offended you</p>

<p>I didn't take E&M so I wouldn't know. I would suggest to practice lots of free response for Mechanics - at least look through all the collegeboard ones that they've released.</p>

<p>Hm... it seems like there is only one version of the Physics C exam so I must have taken the same one as Dmitriy_Y. I thought the first and second questions were really hard; particularly, I had no clue how to do the second question (gravitation is one of my weaker areas). The first one was weird, too - doesn't it take the same amount of time for the object to rise and fall? I could do all of the third question until I got to the part where the ball is moved up.</p>

<p>We could make an analogy between Math IIC and BC Calculus and Math IC and AB Calculus. The harder math tests have insanely generous curves while the eaiser ones don't.</p>

<p>i guess, but calc AB has a really generous curve as well (albeit not as generous as BC, but close)
although only 20 percent of people get 5s on AB and 40 percent get 5s on BC, you have to realize that the people taking BC are the cream of the crop students in high school, whereas many average-above average students take AB as their highest level of math before entering college, thus lowering the percentage of people who get a 5 on AB</p>

<p>Yeah, that's true.</p>

<p>Anyways, despite my SSP rejection, I contacted some profs at the local university and will be working on not only 1, but two research projects, one over the summer and one next year. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.astro.washington.edu/debattis/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.astro.washington.edu/debattis/&lt;/a> next summer and...</p>

<p><a href="http://www.astro.washington.edu/undergrad/projects.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.astro.washington.edu/undergrad/projects.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Zejlko Ivezic's Milky Way halo structure traced by RR Lyrae. </p>

<p>Both = programming projects.</p>

<p>Oh and Ivezic answered my childhood question on supergiants w00t!</p>