<p>You need to start low and work your way up. The difference between me acing differential equations and not came down to me making small algebra mistakes. I’ll probably never forgive myself for it so trust me, listen to my words.</p>
<p>KHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!!! Academy actually, not “kahn academy.” :-P</p>
<p>I’ll tell you my situation, maybe it’ll give you a little more confidence about my advice. I was an extremely crappy high school student, and before senior year I never liked math at all. In fact, junior year was when I took precalc and since I didn’t need it to graduate, I slept everyday and failed it because I didn’t care. I didn’t learn one thing from that class. Sophomore year with Algebra II wasn’t so great either, but I managed to pass them since I had to. Still, my algebra skilsl were just so-so. Fast-forward to senior year, I get my stuff together and take 6 APs, two of which were Physics C mech and e&m (calculus based), so I had to teach myself calculus basically. It didn’t turn out great, since I did it in a weird order and thus didn’t understand some physics concepts as well as I should have. But this summer I’ve just taken three classes, one of which was Calculus I and aced it very easily. I should note that I took the ACT early in my senior year and scored a 30 or 31 overall and a 32 on my math. All I really knew about trig was SOHCAHTOA and the inverse trigs. I still don’t quite completely know the unit circle and trig that well, but I’m self=learning. Note, I’m taking my calculus final the day after tomorrow…and I have an A easily.</p>
<p>So it won’t really hurt you to sit in on that precalc class while you’re taking calculus. Thing is, you don’t really have to do the homework for trig (unless the teacher says you have to) since you’ll be applying it in calculus a lot. That being said, I figure I did pretty well despite the weird order I did things. The only thing you should really make sure you’re good at it algebra. Even if you’ve already taken the ACT, I’d say still practice some of those math sections more since they’re very algebra-based and will help you get nice and quick at it. Calculus will slaughter you if you haven’t mastered algebra completely. That’s excluding ridiculous things like matrices and permutations that you will learn again later; you don’t need those for calculus.</p>