Six weeks before calculus starts, review algebra or just start calculus Resources

Targeted algebra review, not a whole precalc course. Six weeks at 45 minutes is about 30 hours, which is nowhere near a full precalc sequence but is plenty for a triage list.

The things that actually sink people in Calc 1, in the order they will hurt you:

• factoring and simplifying rational expressions, because every limit problem is this in disguise
• exponent and log rules, both directions
• the unit circle and the values of sin and cos at the standard angles, cold
• function notation and composition, especially f(g(x)) for chain rule later
• graph transformations, shifts and stretches

If you can do those five without hesitating, you are ready. Skip conic sections, skip matrices, skip most of the trig identity zoo.

Mild disagreement with the pure review plan. I would split it, four weeks of algebra triage and then two weeks reading the first chapter of whatever textbook the course uses. Not to learn it, just so the first two weeks of term are the second time you see limits rather than the first. Working full time, that head start buys you slack for the week something goes wrong.

Whatever you pick, do problems rather than watch videos. I lost a month of evenings to lecture videos before an old exam paper showed me I could follow every step and produce none of them. 45 minutes of working problems beats 90 minutes of watching someone else work them.

Practical bit: find out now whether the course allows a calculator on exams. If it does not, add mental arithmetic with fractions to the triage list, because doing derivative quotients with ugly fractions under time pressure is its own skill.