<p>Anyone else notice the pattern</p>
<p>Many kids with a low grade in a class as a senior, and its CALC!!!!!!!</p>
<p>Kids with solid grades all through school who are trying hard, but Calc is killing them</p>
<p>When will colleges reconsider that it is necessary to succeed in college by taking Calc in HS....</p>
<p>what i see is that many kids in my school insist taking calc instead of an alternative such as stats because they think its the right way to college...its ones one choicce to go into calc and you cant really blame a college</p>
<p>Do colleges look badly at one for not taking Calc? I opted to take stat, because guidance suggested it might help me better for my intended major.</p>
<p>The problem as far as I've seen is not Calculus per se, but the quality of the mathematics being taught in previous years. Calculus requires students to take knowledge about various topics of mathematics and apply the ideas of calculus to them. Most students, however, have not learned all thier mathematics for mastery. If you don't know trig very well, or have a difficult time performing algebra, calculus can seem damn near impossible. Topics, such as conic sections in my school, are removed from the honors curriculum to spend more time on review of last year's material, which would not be an issue if summer vacations did not occur and the US would switch to year round schooling, instead of the brain drain.</p>
<p>My D was oushed into taking Calc, she took stats instead and is much happier...it is the attitude of colleges</p>
<p>Toughest COurse Loud...blah blah blah</p>
<p>And schools, HS and Colleges see Calc as fillig that "requirement"</p>
<p>DO you think alot of kids would take Calc if another math alternative was given the respect they deserve? I would hazard a guess and say no...</p>
<p>I thnk colleges need to say, outloud, that Calc is not the only way into their school, instead of implying that it is needed</p>
<p>I see many smart kids, who got into amazing schools freaking out now because of Calc, which they will never ever need</p>
<p>How do you define "another math alternative"? Mathematics is a sequence, and if that sequence is broken in any fasion, it becomes increasingly difficult to learn new material. AP Statistics really should not qualify as another math alternative, as it is more of a social science. It is basically a plug and chug course with any mathematical knowledge required overrided through calculator programs. Maybe students should not have the sequence of Algebra I (one year), Algebra II/Geometery (two years), Trig/Precalc (one year) as the prequisite for calculus, because there seem to be fundamental topics that are missing, because they are stuggling.</p>
<p>well if your doing something in math for college...or science for that matter...you pretty much need to take calc and do well or in all honesty pick another major</p>
<p>The problem is that college calc is even harder. You are right, a lot of good students get killed by high school calc, but a lot of college freshmen get killed by college calc! The concepts are really hard for many people. My son did take AB Calc in high school, but sought a lot of tutoring help from a former teacher. He did well. He needed tutoring help for both college calc courses he took- he said the courses were impossible. His grades were fine, but he really struggled. My daughter said a lot of kids at Rice had trouble with freshman calc, too. She was glad she took it in high school (even though she *****ed about it) and got a 5 on the AP exam so she was through with it.</p>
<p>Yeah, for me, Calc BC is my easiest class that's not mind-numbing, but then again, I find that it is useful. Math is starting to pay off.</p>
<p>Maybe math isn't really your thing. Problem is, you're competing with thousands of kids who are sucking it up and taking it even if it isn't their thing, either.</p>
<p>not the same pattern at our HS, sorry. </p>
<p>While AP Stat is a fine course (one which more journalists should be forced to ace before thay move on in J-school), it only requires knowledge of basic Algebra. Calc is a whole different way of thinking. Do many A students earn a B in Calc? Sure. Does it matter, no. IMO, a B in Calc BC would look much better to an adcom than an A in AP Stats. The real downside to Calc in HS, of course, is that is is NOT conducive to senioritis.</p>
<p>As Momof the Wild Thing notes, Calc at the next level can be much harder. My son, a humanities major, is extremely happy for taking Calc in HS -- he reports that many of his non-premed friends that are taking Calc as a college Frosh are burning the midnight oil to keep up -- the reason being that many in the class are premeds and are retaking Calc for the repeat "easy" A. Thus, the curve is brutal for those not well-prepared.</p>
<p>It really is not college math professors who want students to take calculus in high school. Perhaps it is admissions officers who hope to see that students took challenging courses. In fact, calculus is too often poorly taught at the high school level. Students learn lots of procedures with little conceptual understanding. This will be of little help in college math and science courses. I would much prefer to see a student in my university math courses who learned precalculus well instead rushing to calculus in high school.</p>
<p>I got my first B+ in math in Calculus. :(</p>
<p>This time I got an A though. :) Just thought I would share.</p>
<p>At my school we don't offer AP Stats and our most advanced Math class is PreCalc. We do however share a campus with a respectable private LAC so we can take Calc I there and that is what I did. I had no problem with Calc. I jumped from PreCalc with an A- to Calc I and got an A. We had an excellent teacher that taught PreCalc but he is gone, yet we have had students get Cs and Ds or drop the class to avoid getting a worse grade. Personally, I am not a huge fan of AP classes and think that college level work should be done in a college class at a college.</p>
<p>citygirlsmom: Yes, I noticed this trend; thanks for bringing this up. While I think calculus is a valuable course to take, for a kid who is not a science/math person, AP Calc seems particularly rigorous. I think some colleges do expect students to take APCalc (mainly the most selective ones -- others don't care), and I think a poor grade in calculus can hurt students -- first, because so many students do get As, and second, if your school doesn't weight grades then GPA and rank can be hurt. A calculus class that is designed more for non-math/science students might be better (at my daughter's HS, the calculus teacher told me she teaches the class assuming everyone in there will be engineers or physics majors -- that makes the class particularly difficult if you're not one of those). </p>
<p>It's absolutely true that a kid who will be taking calculus in college should take AP Calc in hs. But that does not apply to many kids. Do I think it's possible to get into a highly selective school without calculus -- absolutely yes. It might be harder, though.</p>
<p>AP Stats at my school is a joke.
Calc BC is actually rather fun, mostly because my teacher is British, and it's just a fun class. I got a B, but mostly everyone else got A'.
Everyone who opted for Calc AB didn't even bother to look at who was teaching it. It's a terrible teacher and everyone is struggling in that class.</p>
<p>Wow. I really wish I'd known this before I made the choice to take Stat over Calc. Woo!</p>
<p>I guess I'm lucky in that my Calc teacher at least understands that out of the 12 of us in the class, only like 2 or 3 actually intend on going farther into math. I'm definitely NOT a math person, but I felt like I had to take AP Calc to keep my app competitive, since my school only has 4 APs.</p>
<p>I consider my calc teacher to be extremely hard when one person (the valedictorian) has a B+, me a B-, and the rest...well not an A or a B.</p>
<p>I feel that AP Calc is really the first math course requiring a higher level of math thinking. (While precalc touches on this, it's really not the same.) I took AP Calc when I was a sophomore, and am really happy with that decision. As someone already said on this thread, it's a class that isn't conducive to senioritis -- solution: take it earlier on. I was much happier taking the easier class (AP Stat) as a junior, rather than the other way around. AP Calc can be overcome by studying more. The problem is that many of us don't study that much as seniors.</p>