<p>Hi everyone! </p>
<p>I just picked up my schedule for senior year today, and it looks great! However, I do have one problem. In eighth grade, I wasn't in an advanced math class. Thus, throughout high school, even though I've taken honors math classes and remained near the top of my class, I was never at the same math level as other top students in my grade. For example, freshman year, while the most advanced kids in my grade were taking honors geometry, I was a level below in honors Algebra 1. </p>
<p>Well, now that I'm a senior and have completed three math courses, I wanted to take an advanced math that would look nice on an application. Usually, students at my school progress through math like this (keep in mind that my school doesn't offer any AP maths, only dual enrollment at highest level): </p>
<p>Algebra 1 -> Geometry -> Algebra 2 -> PreCalculus -> Advanced Math (ex. Statistics, Calculus, College Algebra through dual-enrollment) </p>
<p>Now that I'm a senior, I don't want to just take PreCalculus and be done. I feel like that would look a bit underachieving-ish. Due to scheduling issues, I wasn't able to fit PreCal in if I wanted to take a college-level statistics class through dual enrollment, so my counselor permitted me to just skip PreCal and head straight into statistics. </p>
<p>My question is, is this a wise thing to do? I've heard that PreCal and Stats are on the same level of difficulty, is that true? The main question is, will I be okay in Stats without PreCal?</p>
<p>Precalculus classes aren’t all alike–because there isn’t really such a thing as “precalculus” in the way that there are such things as “algebra” or “geometry” or “calculus”–but mostly they comprise some more algebra and a lot of trigonometry. If you did well in Algebra II, you should know enough algebra to do AP Statistics, and you won’t need trig for statistics.</p>
<p>If your school’s precalculus class included a unit on combinatorics, that would have been useful in statistics, but it shouldn’t take you long to learn what you need to know.</p>
<p>As long as you’re a good math student generally, you should be fine.</p>
<p>However, if you’re planning to do anything involving math in college–including any of the natural sciences, engineering or economics–you’re going to need to learn calculus. If you don’t learn precalculus in high school, you’ll just be slowing yourself down in college.</p>
<p>I’m not sure about your college stats class, but if its anything like the AP Stats class, you aren’t missing anything since AP Stats isn’t calculus based. Besides the probability, statistics is more about writing and tests than equations and other math you would learn in pre-calc. I honestly feel like pre-calc was a waste of a math class because the first half was algebra 2 review and the second half was easy things you learn in the first few weeks of calc, but I guess the class varies based on the school. In short though, I think you will be fine!</p>
<p>If your major in college needs calculus, you will need to take precalculus (including trigonometry) either in high school or as a remedial course in college before you take calculus (note: “college algebra” is typically a remedial math course).</p>
<p>Majors that need calculus include all science and engineering majors, economics, and business.</p>
<p>Personally I think that missing precalc is a skipped class. It is foundational and part of a normal advanced math sequence. I look at Stats as an elective one does after one fulfills core courses. Of course, there is no reason you can’t take both the same year if it fits your schedule. But your GC should be your guide.</p>