<p>Would taking calc ABAP as a junior and then taking calc bcap as a senior seem okay to MIT? Some may argue that by taking a second year you are slacking off (B review), but then again, wouldn’t it build a very strong calculus base to have two years of it?</p>
<p>1 year of Calc BC is supposed to come after 1 year of Calc AB… </p>
<p>Either way, I doubt MIT does such an analysis to such depth when it comes to what math level class u NEED to be accepted.</p>
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<p>No, that’s just bizarre–unless your school has a special system that is different from the rest of the country. </p>
<p>Calc BC isn’t hard anyway. Calc AB is probably very boring. If mathboy is right, I cannot imagine having formulas just given to you. That defeats the whole point of calculus.</p>
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<p>Wait, what? At least the way they taught it in my high school, Honors Precalc spent the last half of second semester teaching the A topics, so that we’d be prepared for BC… why would you take the B part twice?</p>
<p>Besides, the A part is easy and you can probably teach yourself if you have any math skill at all. And you probably wouldn’t be interested in MIT if you were terrible at math.</p>
<p>@neongreen: It’d probably be more interesting to take BC as a junior and then multivariable calc and diff eq in 12th grade.</p>
<p>@Djokovic: My school doesn’t do it that way, I don’t think. I just took BC as a junior and moved on.</p>
<p>Well I am taking AB AP now as a junior since I felt that that would be good as I am taking a lot of other reallllly hard classes (and I have a lot of ec commitments).
So I’m asking if it will be weird if I take BC next year now? I really don’t see anything wrong with it, personally, since hey, some don’t go past calcabap and still get in. Is this reasonable? AB then BC in terms of my circumstances) I am also doing statsap next year (with BC).</p>
<p>Stat is pretty relaxing… I miss Stat…</p>
<p>I think if you do what you want to do and enjoy doing it, that’s perfect.</p>
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<p>I was exaggerating a bit, but to be honest many schools just turn BC into a faster-paced version of AB. And I do know some AB programs that wouldn’t really have one work with the reasoning behind some of it, because a lot of this can be fudged on the AP exam.</p>
<p>In an ideal world, AB just teaches a portion of BC, and at a high level of rigor, but in our far from ideal world, I think AB at many schools might actually be watered down, rather than just slower.</p>
<p>I’m in AB because that’s the only AP Calc course my school offers, and needless to say I am completely bored out of my mind. To be honest, I had no idea that I could take the AP tests without taking the course, which is disappointing. I could have gotten that over with last year.</p>
<p>@ lidusha</p>
<p>Well, at my school we only offer Calc BC as well. I am just saying that at some schools, if it is the norm to do AB for 1 year then BC for another, the OP shouldn’t PMS.</p>
<p>Of course, Math classes are different everywhere across the country.</p>
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<p>It’s going to look really odd, and djokovic, no it’s not the norm to take Calc AB and then BC, unless a school has renamed precalc as calc AB. Even if there is such a place, the adcoms will not have heard of it. It’s one thing to take calc BC as a senior because your school only goes up to calc and you started out on a slower track. Or, alternatively, if you took Calc AB because your school doesn’t offer BC or you couldn’t schedule it. It’s different if you were on a faster track, took the easier version, and then took the harder version. It would probably look better if you had skipped math for a year (although people shouldn’t try this either.)</p>
<p>Anyway, I highly discourage this. Calc BC is important for AP physics, so you are just handicapping your performance in two areas. </p>
<p>There is also a general guideline to college admissions that says you take the hardest schedule possible. Now don’t go crazy with that and take every AP your school offers, but what you want to try to avoid is making it obvious that you chose the easier path because you weren’t up to it. Taking Calc AB and then BC makes it look like you chickened out the first time. Even if MIT admissions has evolved such that they look past it, you can’t count on getting in MIT and other colleges might look at you like you have 3 heads for essentially taking the class twice. </p>
<p>Since you have already done this, one alternative would be to take it during the summer at a university.</p>
<p>At my son’s school the students on the highest track take AB junior year. There is no formal precalculus class. It is included with the AB topics. Senior year is called BC and beyond. It covers the remaining topics for the BC exam and then covers some other topics at a very theoretical level. (Not sure which ones since I’m not in the class.) According to his teacher the students finish with a very deep understanding of calculus, much more than is required on the BC exam. </p>
<p>So one can take AB as a junior and BC as a senior. It really depends on the school.</p>
<p>^That’s different because that second year doesn’t include AB topics - so that would be fine in his case</p>
<p>Most schools the first semester of BC covers AB material.</p>
<p>quote:
“It’s one thing to take calc BC as a senior because your school only goes up to calc and you started out on a slower track. Or, alternatively, if you took Calc AB because your school doesn’t offer BC or you couldn’t schedule it. It’s different if you were on a faster track, took the easier version, and then took the harder version…There is also a general guideline to college admissions that says you take the hardest schedule possible. Now don’t go crazy with that and take every AP your school offers, but what you want to try to avoid is making it obvious that you chose the easier path because you weren’t up to it. Taking Calc AB and then BC makes it look like you chickened out the first time.”</p>
<p>Well, I really don’t think I have slacked off this semester, or “chickened” out. In addition to AP AB I am taking AP Biology, Honors Literature, US History AP, and French 4AP, plus a varsity sport. I am also involved in robotics and debate. At my school, CalcAB AP is actually not at all a boring class. We are expected do things very fast on tests, and the word problems can be challenging if you look for the hardest ones. </p>
<p>Would you guys recommend I take the “C” part of calc over summer then, so I can avoid repetition of “B”?
And seriously, would this look bad? I will probably have finished calc then by junior summer, take stats AP in school senior year and co-enroll in (Linear Algebra, diff. equations??? what’s next?) at a local college. Would this be the path to take from where I stand?</p>
<p>I too was under the impression that there ARE many schools that have students take AB one year and BC the next. My school doesn’t do that, but when I was skulking around the AP Prep boards last May it seemed that many people were in that situation.</p>
<p>I don’t think it would look bad at all, and I admire the OP for knowing what he/she wants. I personally almost regret the rigor of my schedule this year because while I love my classes, there are days when I’m very very stressed - the danger of overdoing it is very real, something I never believed until now. On the other hand, OP, if you know that you’ll love whatever schedule you have, go with it and ignore everyone else’s comments.</p>
<p>As for the question - there’s lots of better things you can do with your summer than study math all by your lonesome, but that’s my personal opinion. Do what YOU want to do, and if that takes you to MIT then it’ll take you to MIT. If not, well, you sound motivated; I’m sure you’ll be fine in life.</p>
<p>Neon, it struck me as odd, and I think I’m not alone. At best, it’ll be like showing up to your interview wearing two ties (though I may be out-of-date; in Back to the Future II, set in the “future” (2015), Michael J. Fox was wearing two ties.) </p>
<p>Junior year summer is important, and I don’t think it’s wise to spend it trying to make up for some perceived faux pas. I took a college class during the summer after my junior year, and while I enjoyed it, it probably hurt me in terms of admissions. If you decide to take a class, do it because you want to or because you think it would be good for you in the long run to get that kind of rigor in high school.</p>
<p>If admins do care, one way to mitigate the damage would be self-study to take the calc AP and get a “5” this year. You can self-report these things. I managed to do it after 3 weeks of an accelerated calc class (CTY/CTD’s awesome!!), so it is possible to do it with self-study spread over a year.</p>
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<p>Intense, I never knew this. I happened to be taking math classes, but still. I assume this means it’s important in the sense that one should be doing something “more” than taking classes?</p>
<p>Mathboy, it’s probably better that you and I didn’t know that while we were in high school. If you have an extremely strong record, it’s probably already clear that you are capable of getting A’s in college. I’m sure you’ve heard the cliche’ that they want to admit people who can “do the work,” in other words comfortably pass their classes. Yeah, basically, in terms of admissions you should be doing “more.”</p>
<p>Doing “more” usually results in some canned community service “experience”, and admissions officers eat it up. I’ve seen them literally groan about another kid taking classes during the summer. It’s boring to them. I guess you can do research too, although that’s tough if you’re interested in a theoretical field. </p>
<p>Admissions officers are not professors, and they may not identify with someone that enjoys learning.</p>
<p>I’m inclined to think it was better I was ignorant too, because I’d certainly have been much less happy doing something other than classes back in the day…</p>
<p>But one thing I never understood is why the emphasis placed on early research experience. I wonder what “research” is even defined as – I’ve seen many things go under that name. I’d think especially when one isn’t applying to graduate school, and is planning on spending roughly 4 years at an institution of learning, a special interest in learning is even one of the more important things.</p>