<p>My sophomore S skipped Trig and went straight into AP Calc. Should he take the SAT 2 Math in June right after he is done with the AP AB Calc exam? He would be taking the subject test before he would be taking the actual SAT (in high school, he did take it in junior high). Will not taking Trig hurt?</p>
<p>Yes, it will. Many of the questions are trigonometric operations that would not be learned in Calculus AB, for the most part. Basic trig may be learned but the SAT II Math 2 has questions that aren’t always so straightforward on how to solve them using trig. What he should do is take a trigonometry course online such as on Khan Academy or Coursera, or even read a book on the material in order to fully understand it.</p>
<p>I find trig fairly straightforward to self-study. I’m assuming he knows at least the basic definitions and identities (otherwise AP calculus would be much more difficult since differentiating/integrating with trig functions is common).</p>
<p>A few things I suggest he learn/review are: applying trig to right triangles, law of sines, law of cosines, area formula, complex numbers/Euler’s identity.</p>
<p>It actually makes sense to take SAT Math 2 soon - in December (and in January, if needed), while his precalc memories are not displaced by the AP Calc stuff. As MITer94 said, learning basic trig through self-study is easy and quick - there are no complex trig identities or equations on the test.
I also agree with the MITer’s list except for Euler’s identity - have never seen it on the the test.
I would add the unit circle, of course, and trig functions/graphs’ periods/ranges/amplitudes/shifts and inverse functions.</p>