Our S19 is a strong math student and is currently taking Pre-Calc H as a sophomore. Doing well in the class. For junior year, he has to choose between AB or BC Calc. At our high school, you take one or the other, never one after the other. I understand the differences between the two classes. He wants to take BC because that’s where his teacher placed him and insists that only the less-smart math kids are in AB. His counselor and I think he should take AB because (1) he has three other AP classes planned and they will be a ton of work, 2) he’s already decided that he does not want to be an engineering or computer science major and (3) AB is probably an easy A for him and he can use the extra time to focus on his other AP classes.
So, his junior and senior year would either be (1) AB Calc and then AP Stats or (2) BC Calc and then an honors course called Honors Math Topics which is basically the class you would take in college after BC Calc with differential equations, etc. The second track is usually just for kids who plan to apply to engineering programs. S19 isn’t sure what he wants to major in yet (he’s 15!!) but he likes writing, environmental studies, history, economics, maybe even biology.
I’m looking for advice on what kind of majors would require him to continue on the calculus track in college. Does it depend on the college? If he’s a bio or environmental science major, does that usually require more calculus than the AB course? I’m pretty sure that the AB and AP Stats classes would be just fine for the other majors.
He’s applying to highly selective schools if that makes any difference. Not Ivies or Stanford, but highly ranked LACs.
If he is applying to highly selective schools, they will look at the rigor of the courses he has taken. If he does the Calc BC and then the honors math, that would be the most challenging track offered in the school. So there’s that. Is he in sports or something else that takes a lot of time? What are the other AP classes? One out-of-the box sequence would be to take AP Stats junior year and Calc BC senior year. This gives him the cachet of Calc BC and he still has time for the other AP classes his junior year. May want to talk to counselor about that.
A 10th grader in honors precalculus who is doing well and enjoys the class is typically a top student in math who should be able to handle calculus BC with little trouble (will probably see it as an easy A and easy 5 on the AP test).
Typical math requirements in college:
Biology or environmental science: calculus (often a year), often also statistics
Economics (not pre-PhD): calculus (often a year), statistics (a few schools require more math)
Economics (pre-PhD): calculus, multivariable calculus, linear algebra, real analysis, calculus-based probability theory, etc…
He’ll be taking AP Lang, AP US History, AP Physics I, as well as French 4 Honors and an honors art class that requires plenty of work outside class. He also runs XC and track which is year-round six days a week. Doesn’t usually get home until 6:00 each day from school after practice. So, yes, he has a packed schedule. Counselor just thinks he doesn’t NEED the BC Calc for what he wants to do or for the schools he is considering (Carleton, Grinnell, Davidson being just a few). I asked about the rigor question and the GC told me that he would still say he’s on the most rigorous track since he will be all honors and AP for all four years.
I was mostly wondering if he will need to take calculus for these majors…and/or if it would look good to take Stats. I peeked just at Carleton’s website and, even for bio and environmental science, all math requirements were stats.
Does he know any kids who are taking BC Calc right now? My D asked her friends and heard that BC wasn’t all that hard, so she went ahead and took it right out of pre-calc. Her friends in AP Stats told her that class wasn’t hard either, but required a lot of work. She took them both and they were just as predicted. AP BC wasn’t bad, but AP Stats was a huge time sink which was hard with all the other classes she was taking. Do you know who will be teaching these classes next year and can you get any information about the teachers and those classes? It really does vary from school to school and teacher to teacher.
@MamaBear16 thanks! He does know some kids in the BC class. Even the ones who did well in Pre-Calc H said that BC moves very fast. Maybe half of the kids who got As in Pre Calc H ended up with Bs in BC Calc. The dept chair told us that AB and BC are practically the same for the first quarter, then BC starts to pick up the pace since that class has to cover more material. One friend whose son is currently taking BC with a heavy load of APs barely got a B-minus last semester. It’s always so hard to know how it will go for each student since each one is different. My gut says that he should stick with AB. If he needs calc in college, we would probably have him start from scratch anyway since testing out with an AP test and moving up to the next level in college seems to be a recipe for disaster. I took BC as a high school student and started out an engineering major. I tested out of two quarters of Calc and was placed into an impossible class. Ended up with a C. …and changed my major soon after that!
BC will cover the material at approximately the speed of a college calculus course, while AB covers less material at a slower pace.
On the other hand, plenty of students go straight to multivariable calculus and do well after a 5 on the BC exam.
What I would suggest is that if (a) he has an AP calculus score that allows him to skip one or more math courses in college, and (b) he needs to take higher level courses that depend on those math courses, that he try the college’s old final exams for the courses that he is allowed to skip. That way, he can find out if he knows the material well by the college’s standards, or if he should review a few topics, or if he should retake the course.
Calc BC can be so different depending on who is taking it and who is teaching it. For my older son Calc BC was a super easy class (he took it as a junior too) - helped by the fact that he’s a math whiz and the teacher told them to do as much homework as they felt they needed to master the material, but he wasn’t going to check that they did every problem in the book. My younger son’s teacher wasn’t so laissez-faire so, he did have to do the homework. And he’s a kid who really needs a lot of drill to remember math facts. He’s got a good math mind, but can’t remember his multiplication tables! He did fine too with a full schedule, but it was a lot more work for him. I suspect your kid would do fine in BC - I like the idea of talking to other kids about what it was like for them in our school.
My son is currently a junior. He is taking Calc BC along with AP Physics, AP Gov’t and AP Computer Science. Similarly to your son’s school, his schools only allows AB or BC. If a student was on the advanced math track, they tend to take the BC route and not AB. I saw you noted two options for the math track, AB then Stats, or BC then Honors Math Topics. Is there any option to take BC then Stats senior year? Or start in BC but drop down to AB if it warrants sometime during the year? Maye that could alleviate some concerns. I would agree that teachers make a huge difference and either way your son will have a good foundation.
@jcmom716 Ha! both of those are options. He could do BC for the first quarter, see how it goes, and drop to AB if he wants. (I’m afraid he would never do this. He would not do poorly in BC I’m sure but I would prob want him to drop down if he had a B and he would not agree with me.) And, yes, he could take BC and then Stats. Same as your school, the kids who have been on the advanced math track since middle school, in this case two years ahead, almost always take BC. Guidance counselor said, though, that many of those kids also want to major in engineering or comp sci, which our S19 does not. Maybe I should talk to our son more about starting in BC and seeing what happens…and making him agree to move if he doesn’t have a certain grade by the end of first quarter.
While most students in the +2 math track are likely to aim for engineering or other math-heavy majors, there is no reason why a student in the +2 math track who likes and is good at math but wants to pursue some other major needs to avoid math.
@ucbalumnus I would say more than 50% of the kids on the +2 math track at our high school opt out of other honors/AP classes. They tend to be the math/science honors kids and stay away from honors English and foreign language and history. Not all of them, of course, but many and especially the ones who already know they want to apply as engineering majors. Our son, however, does very well in those other subjects and so his work load is rough if he doesn’t prioritize. AP math and science is tough, but AP English classes and history classes are very time intensive and that leaves less time for focusing on math and science. It can be done but usually results in a little lower GPA since there’s really only enough time in a day to get all of the work done and hard to excel at all.
If your son is similar to mine and would rather take a B then make waves (or talk to the teacher about one point that he thinks he got right that would move his grade to a 90, lol), then it might make sense to just stick with AB. It doesn’t sound as though his main interest is math/eng and if the guidance counselor will mark the schedule as most rigorous, he will have AP courses in his area of interest and a better chance of a strong GPA. I tried to tell my son to see what the other kids were taking, and he turned it around on me and said, “I thought I wasn’t supposed to follow what every else did if it wasn’t right for me”…have your son do what’s right for him, it will all work out!
@jcmom716 Good advice. Thanks. S19 loves to make waves. Believe me, fights for every point in most classes. Not as easy to fight for a few points in math, though, since the answers are either right or wrong. Kind of off topic but he was .1 percent away from an A in Chem H and wouldn’t beg for mercy. I called the teacher behind his back and she told me no. She said I should have listened to my son when he said the teacher made it clear that she won’t round up. He still does not know I called her. :))
To some extent, there is no way to know. No way to know if he would find it easy and get an A, or if it would take up all his time and lower his other grades. Also no way to tell you if taking AB over BC will hurt him in his college apps. I think he should take what he feels comfortable with. With our D we figured that she would end up in a place that valued her as a person and a student and there was no need to jump through extra hoops “in case” one or two colleges would have preferred she choose a different class (in her case it was an issue of whether to choose AP Euro over classes she really wanted to take). There is no way to see the future.
It sounds like at your school kids either take AP calculus BC and AP science, or AP humanities /social science… And your son wants to take some of both. The problem you have with it is not his ability to handle the material, but how time consuming it’ll e in addition to the other AP classes he’ll be taking. In that view, AB would be a compromise for him to handle both ‘tracks’.
However, if he took BC, would he be allowed to switch into AB after the first semester if he found BC too time-consuming?
Many students compromise by cutting on sleep and that is really the worst decision possible since it harms their bodies and brains.
@MYOS1634 Yes, the school would let him move to AB if BC was not going well but I know he would not want to move down. He came home from school yesterday and said all of the “less-smart” kids take AB. That’s part of the battle between me and S19. I keep telling him, though, that it’s not a matter of him NOT being able to do well in BC. It’s a matter of having enough time to do well in AP Lang and APUSH at the same time as BC. So far, he’s been doing fine on sleep. He’s very organized. Home from track by 5:30, shower, dinner and homework until 10:30 or so. Social life saved for the weekends! Gets a little more than eight hours of sleep a night. I’m worried, though, that this coming junior year will be more time consuming with AP Lang and APUSH requiring way more reading and writing than he’s doing in his classes now.
I think I’ve convinced him to take AB. We have a little time to change that but I think it’s the right decision.
