Nobody on this site can predict or know your current level of mastery in math. How you proceed should depend on that. So take a placement or diagnostic test to see where your knowledge base falls.
For your consideration: http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/articles/calculus-trap
Tl;DR The best course for mathy kids is not necessarily to rush to calc, but to broaden your math education beyond the standard curriculum.
Try to spend some time on the Art of Problem Solving website over the summer. I think the Alcumus function will have some advanced algebra and you can look around the website and find loads of math questions and answers. Try to take some of the old AMC 10s that you can find on their website.
Obviously I don’t know you, so take this with a grain of salt.
Honestly, I would take pre-calc your freshmen year of high school. You will already be ahead of most, if not all people. Pre-calc could help you with trig, especially if your school does not offer a trig class. Even if you want to take calc freshmen year, you can take it sophomore, leaving you with 2 years of higher level math class (calculus is definitely advanced, by higher level I mean courses not usually taken.)
Hope I helped!
Sorry for my original comment- I hadn’t read the replies and I wasn’t up to date.
I know you may feel pressure from other kids to get as “ahead” as you can, and I totally understand as a high schooler myself. But don’t let that get to you- do what’s best for you and your education.
Go ahead and do your summer class and take precalc freshman year. Then you can do calc AB/BC/statistics later in high school or dual enrollment courses if your school allows it.
As @awesomepolyglot said, if you are going to skip precalc, use Khan academy to learn the stuff that you would otherwise miss. My math teacher is letting me skip precalc because he said it was just a glorified review of Math III (for my state, anyway).
Taking part of the sequence in your school and part at a college does not guarantee that you’ll have all the material you need for the class at your school because they are not “synced up”. My family moved a lot when I was growing up, and one of the hardest parts of that was that what one school included in a prerequisite (and was hence assumed to have been mastered before starting the next class) was part of the following class at another school. As you can imagine, the boring (but safe) version of this was repeating something – like trig, which one school may have tacked onto the end of Algebra 2 and another may have tacked onto the beginning of Precalculus. The disastrous version went the other way. In that case, the second course proceeded on the assumption that trig had been taught and mastered. AND if you’re not good friends with the other kids in the class (possible because of age), finding people to work with and explain it to you can be hard. I would be really careful about your approach. You want your calculus to be SOLID, especially if you’re thinking that for the rest of high school, you’ll be taking math at the local college. My personal experience is that being “precocious” is fine if you’re excelling, but if you hit speed bumps, even legitimately, people will assume that your problems are your own doing and that your don’t really “deserve” help to address them. This is really not fair – and probably not universal – but a risk. If you’re the one pushing, you almost have to be certain you’re going to succeed.
Reconsideration.
I appreciate all your comments; thank you very much. Prior to this, I was rather oblivious to the dynamics of math curricular. I’ll definitely talk to my counselor, and see what he thinks.
Again, thanks you guys.
At my school, trigonometry is part of Pre-Calculus.
I’m an eighth grader currently taking geometry also. I technically have placed into Calculus for next year based on my scores (and the fact that I taught myself most of it on the side), but I know it would not be a good idea to skip Algebra II and Pre-Calculus because they provide an adequate foundation for Calculus (thus meaning I would most likely fail). Are you even sure your school would permit you to do this? My school said I’m technically ready for Calculus, but they wouldn’t even permit me if I wanted to.
There is really no point in skipping precalc… if you take calculus sophomore year you’ll still have 2 years of college math which is more than most
If the student is ready (and have the appropriate prerequisites) the school is supposed/required to provide a chance to give the aforementioned student an opportunity. So, yes.
“I technically have placed into Calculus for next year based on my scores” Just curious, scores on what? What middle school is giving calculus placement tests to their geometry students?
^^^^^^