benjenkinsv95 Wrote:Hey everybody,

It seems like most people on this forum have not been required to take Calculus II, but I thought I would post my experience with it anyway in case someone down the line needs it.

So this course is a lot of work if you don't already know Calculus II. I came into this course knowing Calculus I pretty well and spent roughly 20+ days studying 8-10 hours a day to get through all of the material and successfully complete the exams. That being said, the course material is pretty easy if you found Calculus I to be easy. All of the lessons are taught with Thinkwell Calculus and 99% of the concepts are explained extremely well.

This courses material is split among 6 different exams. The exams are Graded Exam 1, Graded Exam 2, Midterm Exam, Graded Exam 3, Graded Exam 4, and the Final Exam. The exams are all multiple choice and give you roughly 3 minutes per problem, which is very little for calculus questions. You are allowed to use 1 page of notes front and back but you are not allowed to use a textbook during the exams. The tough time limits make the Graded Exams extremely difficult and stressful, but the Midterm exam has duplicated questions from Graded Exams 1 & 2, and the Final Exam has duplicated questions from the Graded Exams 3 & 4. This means that while the Graded Exams are extremely difficult, if you take good notes and learn what you did wrong the Midterm and Final exams will be much easier. I actually finished my final exam with 40 minutes to spare because of how many duplicated questions appeared on the test...

If you do end up taking this course, I would recommend learning your material while using a cheat sheet. A good Calculus I cheat sheet can be found here and you can add some Calculus II elements to it from here. I personally copied over useful information/formulas I found in the cheat sheets over to my notes for use during the tests.

I would also heavily recommend buying a graphing calculator. While you may want to work all of the problems out by hand you can become much more efficient by using a calculator (Especially if you get good at graphing parametric equations, polar equations, and series/sequences). Also learning how to use the "Intfn"(integrate function command) can save you a lot of much needed time when taking these tests.

A last bit of information. These tests have not seen many students, that means a lot of the questions on the tests are wrong. You will have a chance to review the questions after you finish each exam besides the final exam. Feel free to contact straighterline's support and get them to give you points for any question they messed up.

That's all of the Calculus II Straighterline Information I have. On a side note, once my Calculus II Credit is accepted I can apply for graduation and my bachelors shall be complete at long last. Thank you to everybody on this forum for all of your help along the way. I expect to start an ALM in Information Technology from Harvard Extension School inside the next year so i'll be sure to stick around the forums to offer help whenever I can.