AP Calc AB or BC?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

My son’s high school offers Calc AB as a one year course - fall semester Adv Calc then Calc AB in spring. BC is then offered as one semester the following spring, all of the kids in the course will almost certainly have gone through the Calc AB sequence before BC.

DS is above avg in math and has completed the AoPS PreCalculus online course and is almost finished with the AoPS Calculus book with a tutor (he is doing Independent Study). He just did a diagnostic test in the AP Barron’s Calc for AB and scored 76% on the parts he knew. (He had to skip four questions as he has not covered all topics yet - so actually a 67%.)

He wants to go directly to Calc BC as he thinks one year will be too long and boring to sit in class for AB only given he will have completed the AoPS Calc book. He thinks that once he spends some time answering “AP Calc” questions he should have no problem. I am ok with this but clearly would rather have him do AB then BC and get A’s vs straight to BC and wind up with a B in BC.

Any advice from those who might have recently completed AB and BC?

Note, there is no rush for him to get through but at the same time he should not run out of math to take. He has a strong foundation in math having taken Number Theory, Probability, etc. already plus doing well in various math competitions.

2

My situation: took Calc AB as one year course as sophomore, BC the following year as a one year course. The first semester of BC was all direct review of AB (I’m assuming your sons course would not have this as it is only a one semester BC class). Even when we began on the new BC topics, many of them were simply using past AB topics and applying them to a new scenario. Personally, I didn’t think either class was very difficult, and looking back on it, I wish I would have taken only BC. Im not really familiar with the AoPS book, but your son seems to already have a strong foundation for calculus so taking AB would probably bore him to death.

3

I agree. All the stuff in Calc AB we covered in 1 semester and it wasn’t very difficult. I think your son should take Calc BC since he got such high score on the test.

4

Thanks very much for your comments! It gives me a bit more comfort in letting him choose.