<p>I cannot decide what will be the better route to take next year. </p>
<p>AP calculus AB or just take the other route in a community college class and take Calculus there. </p>
<p>Is AP calculus going to be much more difficult? </p>
<p>What is the better class to take?</p>
<p>Whichever class has the best teacher is probably the best one to take. </p>
<p>You could try talking to students who have taken calculus before at each place - find out if the teacher's explanations were clear and interesting, if the homework assignments were good at helping students figure things out, if the teacher had office hours so students could ask for help when they needed it, and if the students helped each other understand things when they got stuck.</p>
<p>If you can fit AP Calc into your schedule, it's the better one to take. It's the course that colleges know how to evaluate, while they may know nothing about the course at your particular CC. You may not get credit for taking it at the CC when you get to college, but you will likely get some credit for a good grade on the AP exam (with the exception of some high level technical schools like MIT or Caltech).</p>
<p>Why are you considering taking the CC class instead?</p>
<p>Well, just so I could get ahead in HS and possible take Calc BC next year. </p>
<p>I'm debating taking the Winter Course, the teacher at the CC is supposed to be top notch but I don't know if that is enough to ride on. </p>
<p>6 week courses? Is it even possible to get an A in a winter class?! Even if i do bust my butt, If i fall behind then that completely ruins my chances. Granted I think I could benefit from taking it in the Winter rather than the whole spring sem. </p>
<p>Is the course easier to make up for the time gap? I wonder...</p>
<p>6 weeks sounds pretty short to learn the equivalent of a semester of calculus.</p>
<p>If the community college course appeals to you, it sounds like there wouldn't be any bad consequences to trying it out. If you felt you hadn't learned enough to be ready for BC, couldn't you still take AB at your school? What is the actual trade-off?</p>
<p>A friend of my daughter's took a self-paced online AB course followed by the equivalent of BC at a local community college. He just started at MIT and he could have gotten out of calculus altogether, but he thought he would benefit from taking multi-dimensional calculus there so he's doing that.</p>
<p>If you take it in winter, you finish in mid-February. Will you even remember enough to take BC in September? 8 months is a long time to go without calculus.</p>
<p>I suggest taking it at a community college. Reason being back in my math days at UCLA, everyone took the calculus ap exam and passed yet about half the folks still opt to take it and we still had a hard time.</p>
<p>The AP exams are decent- I took it as a Junior in high school and thought I was a hotshot but I ate some real humble pie when I came to college. At a school like UCLA your grade might be based on only 2 or 3 exams during the term and on each exam you may only get 3 questions that require a lot of details and proofs. </p>
<p>Having taken a college level math class teaches you how to answer those questions in a way AP calculus might not IMHO so is there definitely value in taking it at a Community college, especially if the CC has a relationship with a university and knows what professors expect on exams.</p>