<p>My son was placed in Calculus 126 (second semester Calculus). Anyone know about this class? Is it worth it to try to petition out of it after receiving the AP scores if my son receives a 5 on the AP Calculus BC exam?</p>
<p>I waived 126 with calc BC and took math 226 (calc 3) instead, though I did take linear algebra before 226 as well. I did fine in 226 and in all of the higher math & engineering courses (400-level & some graduate courses too) and never really felt like I was lacking anything that I missed from 126.</p>
<p>One thing though, I was probably exceptionally well prepared - I knew a whole lot of calculus already. There's probably a couple 126 concepts I never learned, but I was pretty solid on most of it (and it does go somewhat beyond what's on the calc BC exam)</p>
<p>I've heard that 126 can be a hard course, so I'm not sure it's a very good idea to take it as a "GPA boost", if that was a consideration :)</p>
<p>jbusc-thank you so much for your note. My son is very strong in math but did not take linear algebra. Do you think linear algebra is necessary for math 226?
Was math 226 very hard? Do you know if math 126 gives a lot of graded homework?</p>
<p>linear algebra isn't strictly necessary and in fact I think most people do the reverse (226 then take linear algebra)</p>
<p>all the linear algebra concepts you need are kind of self-contained in 226, but if you haven't had <em>any</em> exposure before (i.e., no matrices or vectors or such) I can imagine it would be difficult to process all at once.</p>
<p>However, if you know linear algebra pretty well, then I'd say that helps a bit in 226 since it frees you from having to process the linear algebra stuff on top of the calc. But not a huge deal, I would say.</p>
<p>Probably the biggest thing I remember from 226 was that it seemed like nothing was ever done in rectangular/cartesian coordinates. As soon as the rectangular version was introduced, we'd move on to polar/spherical/cylindrical coordinates and that's what the HW and exams were. Not a big deal, but if you've never seen polar coordinates or such, it could come as a shock. (this means being pretty comfortable with calc with trig, though not all those ridiculous trig identities that are covered in 126) </p>
<p>I didn't find calc 3 particularly hard, but it seems like a lot of people do. By and large it's the extension of calc 1 & 2 concepts to multiple dimensions. The prof made homework 30% of the grade (relatively very high) so it meant you really had to put effort in to the homeworks, though they weren't too long.</p>