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Passed the Calculus Clep Today With a 69 (20 days of prep)
#1
I don't see a lot of feedback on this one so I wanted to post about it. After I took the precalculus clep, I immediately started learning calculus. I had zero prior knowledge of calculus, but I had a really good foundation from just finishing precalculus. I felt pretty confident after 2 weeks of studying 5+ hours a day. I really think this was easier than Precalculus (or maybe trig is just my nemesis), and it's way more interesting, so if you made it through precalc give this one a shot.

Resources:
Khan Academy: Their section on AP Calculus AB is perfect and covered everything on the test. The videos are a brief (maybe too concise at times) and there are tons of practice questions. I pretty much watched the videos and then tried the quizzes (there are like 3-5 for each unit). If the quiz didn't go well, I'd do the individual "practice" questions until I leveled up, and then I'd move on to the next unit. I'd go back and do the unit mastery challenge a day or two later to review the topics. Once I had covered all the units I started doing the course mastery challenge once or twice a day and reviewing anything I seemed to be struggling with. I've seen some other posts saying the last 2 sections (applications of integration and differential equations) are not necessary, but I had several questions on both of those topics on the exam (especially area between two functions, disc method, and exponential models).  I was at 95% for the course on the day of the exam. I was also scoring 90% on the course test most of the time, but I was going very slow and on a lot of questions I would solve it by hand and with the graphing calculator to get practice both ways. 

Paul's Online Math Notes Calculus Cheat Sheet: The second best resource. Some of this is for Calculus II (if it wasn't covered in Khan Academy you'll know). I reviewed parts of this daily as I went through the material and for review. I made flash cards out of some of it to get it memorized. I think it helps to have the same content presented in a slightly different way, and some of it is more formal than what's on Khan, so it's good to recognize what's being said and relating it to what you already learned. Between this sheet and Khan academy, it's all you really need.

Professor Leanorard YT videos: He goes into a lot more detail than Khan academy. I only watched a few videos specifically for topics I was struggling with: u substitution, related rates, and first order separable differential equations. But I think his videos turned my weak spots into strengths and I always felt like I "got it" afterward.

Modern States: The practice questions are really good. The videos by themselves are not in depth enough, and the readings are too in depth. So it's not the BEST way to prep in my opinion, but you can binge the videos and answer the questions in a day to get the voucher. I was able to answer all the questions with just the Khan Academy prep, except for one section where he had a weird formula and I didn't bother memorizing it, and I didn't need it on the clep.


Practice Tests: I have access to learningexpresshub.com (EBSCO) through my library, and they have some AP calc practice test. I can't really recommend them because A LOT of the questions had errors, and they were much more difficult than the actual clep (I scored 60% on one and 50% on the second, but that was partly because of errors on the tests). But they did give me some more problems to practice on, so they helped a little.  I know there are other practice tests out there but I didn't use anything else. 

The Exam:
Everything on the exam was pretty straight forward. For each question I was able to read it and say, "ok it's asking this type of question and here's what I need to do." It was very clear if I needed to integrate, find a related rate, use the mean value theorem, etc. If the question looks impossible, you're probably missing the u substitution they're expecting you to make or something. It was also pretty obvious when you'd need to use the calculator or not (e.g. if the answer options look like 72.1298742983, use a calculator. If it looks like 8sqrt(3)/pi, just solve manually). Speed was my biggest concern going in, and there were a few questions I just guessed on because I knew it would take me too long to solve, but most of the questions were pretty doable. If you look at something and you know it's going to take 5 minutes of algebra to get the answer, just guess, mark for review, and move on. I didn't have time at the end to go back. I also completely bombed several optimization questions, but I knew that was a weakness going in and they just tripped me up. Oh well...

The calculator in the second section is a ti-84. DEFINITELY practice with it as much as possible because it's a far cry from desmos and you will need it (You can use one online that's just like the test one here: https://ibt2calc.ets.org, you can also download a trial of the ti-84 from Texas Instruments and install it on your computer). Also, have the proctor make sure your computer sound is off. The calculator is very loud when you hit buttons, and this time my test had to be interrupted so they could turn the sound off when I got to that section. You should get comfortable using the graphing feature to graph derivatives and integrals of equations and solving specific integrals with the calculator, including the area between 2 functions. For speed, I saved Y1 for whatever equation I needed for a problem, and then set up y2 and y3 to be first and second derivative of Y1. That way I could just toggle the derivative graphs on and off as I needed to graph them without having to type it all out again. That saved a bunch of time. And know how to stop the graph with the on button in case you try to graph an integral that's going to take 10 minutes and need to cancel out. When I finished all the questions in the second section, I had 2 minutes left and 3 questions marked to review--not enough time to go back and solve any of the ones I had marked but I tried lol.

Honestly if you're good on the khan academy stuff and some practice tests, I think you'll be good. 

This was probably my last clep as there's nothing really left that would benifit me. It's been a good run.
TESU BSBA CIS - March 2019
Clep: College Algebra, Analyzing and Interpreting Literature, History of U.S. I, History of U.S. II, Principles of Management, Introductory Sociology, College Composition, American Government, Financial Accounting, Principles of Macroeconomics, Principles of Microeconomics, Principles of Marketing, Information Systems, Introductory Business Law, Introductory Psychology, Western Civilization I, Spanish Language, Biology, Social Science and History, Precalculus, Calculus
Study.com: FIN-102 Personal Finance, FIN-101 Principles of Finance, ACC-102 Managerial Accounting, BUS-308 Globalization and International Management, CS-302 Systems Analysis and Design, CS-303 Database Management, COM-120 Presentation Skills in the Workplace, BUS-113 Business Communication, STAT-101 Principles of Statistics
OnlineDegree.com: Computer Science CS101
Saylor.org: CS402, BUS303, CS302
Certs: CompTIA A+, Net+, Sec+, Linux+, MCSA, LPIC-1, CCNA
TESU: BUS-421 Business Administration Capstone
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