My daughter is a rising Junior and will probably be applying to some elite schools in fall 2019. She is very good at math but her high school AP Calc AB teacher this past year was HORRIBLE. Despite that, she did well and we anticipate she will receive a 5 when the scores are available soon. She scored an 800 on the math portion of the SAT as a sophomore (1560 combined) and to be honest, was almost at that level when she took the SAT in 7th grade. Our options for math for next year are to take AP Calc BC (thankfully different teacher and the better of the two calc teachers at the school) or take Calc 2 and Stats (equivalent to AP Statistics) through Dual Enrollment. She can’t fit the classes at UCF (Univ of Central FL) into her schedule so they would be taken at Valencia Community College (VCC). She will be taking four other AP classes this year (AP Lang, Physics, US History and Chinese). Would she be better off taking AP Calc BC and Stats junior/senior years or finishing both classes at VCC this year and then taking something like Calc 3/differential equations senior year? The benefit of taking them at the VCC is that they are only a semester each versus a full year… Thanks in advance!
Obviously, the college courses will be faster paced than the high school courses.
In theory, a college may offer a calculus-based statistics course that may be more interesting to a strong-in-math student, but VCC does not offer such a course, although it does offer an honors introductory statistics course.
How interested is she in math or math-based subjects (e.g. physics, engineering, or economics) where taking math beyond single variable calculus would be helpful?
In terms of transfer credit and advanced placement based on college courses taken while in high school, be sure to save course syllabuses, book lists, and other materials like returned assignments and exams for evaluation by the receiving school, if it is not a Florida public university.
Just to add, the likelihood of the credit transferring to a non-FL public university is lower than that for a FL public university, and the odds of transfer credit to a private university are exponentially smaller, although placement to a higher level may be possible.
I agree…if she is planning to go to a FL public than either is fine, but if you were going out of state then AP
Thanks for the feedback. My daughter is interested in Computer Science and might want a Math minor. Some of the CS flowcharts I’m seeing for colleges show they have to take a few higher level math classes. EE and CS seem to still be similar tracks like they were when I was an undergrad.
In this case, if she wants to take math at a faster pace, taking it at the college can help. It can also give her a taste of how college courses are run (much more self motivation and management needed) before she goes to college full time.
Non calculus based stats is not going to be particularly useful for a CS major.
Thanks VickiSoCal. I looked some more and I’m seeing both. Some program have regular stats and others have calc based. I was EE undergrad (a long time ago) and that surprised me a little because I didn’t take stats in undergrad at all but then had calc based stats at the start of my Masters degree. I’m impressed. That was a tough class.
When asked directly, my daughter’s guidance counselor also agreed that AP would be preferred over DE so we’ve requested that AP calc BC be placed on her schedule. I can’t believe the counselor didn’t say anything when my daughter first told her she was thinking about taking DE math several months ago so didn’t have any math class on her schedule for this up-coming year. Thankfully someone at the VCC Honors program mentioned it to me so I could start asking around… And thanks for all the feedback!
If she chooses the college calculus 2 course, she could also take the BC exam, just in case she later goes to a college that is more accepting of the AP score than the college course taken while in high school (she would not get double credit, but just be more likely to get credit and placement for calculus 2 if she has both the college course and the AP score).
For math beyond calculus 2 and non-calculus-based statistics, she would need to take college courses.