<p>I'm a senior in high school and i chose calculus. Now, actually seeing the class i realized that im not sure why i am taking it. I dont want to major in anything that has to do with math (for the most part) and my teacher told me this class is going to be extremely hard. Should i continue on with the class and risk getting a bad grade in a class i dont "need" or should i switch to statistics? ( we have to take either stat or calc)</p>
<p>Please help, I have to make the decision tonight!</p>
<p>if you major in any of the sciences i would suggest sticking with Calc</p>
<p>How selective of colleges are you applying to? The calculus is the more rigorous schedule. No matter your major. How did you do in precalc?</p>
<p>The GC at our school says that for the high achieving students they should take Calculus over Stat. That being said, if you are truly feeling lost you may want to switch. Calculus gets progressively harder. My son is in Calculus III right now and aides in the AB/BC Calc. class - he said he can already tell which kids are going to be struggling all year. </p>
<p>What does the teacher/your parents/the GC recommend at this point?</p>
<p>well the majors i am thinking about are English or Psychology.
I took Pre-calc last year and didn’t do that well. But i also don’t want colleges to think that i dont like to challenge myself. I just want to take the class that would be better for my major.</p>
<p>I kind of swim against the current on this one.</p>
<p>I am a math teacher. When my daughter was a senior in high school, she was dead certain (and so was I) that she wouldn’t major in anything remotely science-y in college. I encouraged her to take statistics instead of calculus.</p>
<p>If you don’t need calculus, you really don’t need calculus. There are a handful of concepts from single-variable calculus that are useful for people who aren’t scientists, economists, engineers or mathematicians, but there are darn few of them. On the other hand, everybody who’s ever going to read a report or a newspaper intelligently ought to know a little bit about statistics.</p>
<p>If you want to get a little bit more analytical about this question, think about why you didn’t do so well in precalculus. Was it the algebra or the trig? If it was the trig, that will be a problem for you in calculus, but not all the time. If it was the algebra, you’ll be toast. </p>
<p>But either way, the combination of not having been a great precalc student and not wanting to major in a quantitative field in college is more than enough for me. If you were my kid, I’d encourage you to take statistics.</p>
<p>Calculus will be needed for any science, engineering, economics, or business.</p>
<p>For all other majors (particularly social studies majors like psychology), statistics knowledge is more generally useful, although if you want to take a more in-depth statistics course in college, calculus may be helpful for that. For humanities majors like English, statistics is not specifically needed for the major, but is good general knowledge to have.</p>
<p>However, note that AP statistics is usually considered less rigorous than AP calculus AB or BC, since AP statistics is typically equivalent to a one semester college course that is usually considered less difficult than calculus 1 in college that AP calculus AB approximates.</p>