Barron's AP Chemistry

The book has writing inside and the pages are all folded

I really like Barron's review books because their philosophy is that they teach you the subject matter. Princeton Review books on the other hand are about "cracking the test" and does offer good tips, but if I were to get one book, it'd be Barron's because learning the subject is the surest way to getting a good score. Having said that, the book is LOADED with errors and for that I deduct 1 star... anything from just typing the wrong character ("=" instead of '-') to wrong answers, wrong set-ups, decimal places in wrong place, missing decimal places... you get the idea. It's as if the whole Chemical Equilibrium chapter was edited by someone who wanted to sabotage the student. I am not kidding. But the thing is, if you reasonably know the concepts, you'd catch the mistakes because the mistakes are in the examples and not in the concept explanations. Don't be scared away because of the typos, but just know they are there. In the final analysis, it is still a valuable book to me and I like it despite its faults.

Mastering all the contents of this book would guarantee you a 5, but is not always an easy thing to do. I bought this book 2 weeks before the test and found it extremely difficult to cram all of its contents (I have 100 in AP Chem)in such a short period of time. It was even more upsetting when the AP came out to be not even half as difficult. If you have a solid background of AP Chemistry and just need a review book that is concise with a lot of good practices, I would recommend Princeton Review. ( Trust me, Princeton Review is more than enough to get you a 5. Don't get yourself panic by buying this overly-complicated book)

I like the Barron's Chemistry because it is extremely thorough, almost like a textbook in its approach. The multiple choice questions are a lot harder than those that you will find in some other reviews, and hard is good. I actually taught review classes from this book, and found that it was remarkably complete. Caveat, there are a few errors here and there, but if you know what you are doing, you will catch them immediately. I have not seen a book that did not have a wrong answer or typo somewhere in it. My suggestion is to use Barron's through the year, then pair it with a quicker thinner review book at the end, because this book is not a "quick brush up" kind of a book. And yes, do questions from old exams, free response questions, and lots of them. The Chemistry AP is very hard. You simply cannot be "overprepared."

I am studying for my DAT now and i think this book is much more sufficient than Kaplan. I took my general chemistry 5 years ago; thats why some of the important concept had faded out of my memory. I am really scared since i dont want to go back to my gen textbook; i am glad that i picked out this book The book also very organize and really easy to understand. I recommend for any students who are struggled with General Chem to have this book.