<p>So my school is making changes to the schedule, and beginning next year (my junior year) AP Calc will take two years (one for AB, one for BC). In an effort to get around this restriction, I've decided to take Calc I and II at a local community college. This way I can get through both in one year, then take Calc III and Diff. Eq. senior year. </p>
<p>My question is, would a college prefer two college credits in the form of AP classes (Calc AB and BC) or four credits in the form of college classes (Calc I, II, III and Diff. Eq.)? Also, would a college like/dislike the fact that I took a college class regardless of the fact that it's offered at my high school (Calc I and II)?</p>
<p>And for the record, it wouldn't be dual-enrollment--it would be in evenings, totally separate from my high school schedule.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure the colleges will be more excited that you’re taking Calculus III and Diff. Eq senior year than they would be if you were just taking the vanilla AP Calculus BC at your high school–all those APs must start to run together for ad coms. </p>
<p>It looks like this will also free you up for another AP or something else at your high school–just check and see how these courses would affect your ranking…it looks like you don’t plan to use them for high school but you may get lucky and they may give you AP credit for each course.</p>
<p>My only other words of advice are to look into taking the AP Calculus BC exam anyway, because the schools you’re looking at may not accept transfer credit, and that you should prepared to do less required work in a college class, but you’ll be expected to learn more.</p>
<p>I would say take it as AP at you’re high school, as a general rule of thumb, AP Classes are more rigorous and challenging than the college classes they replace, at least thats what I’ve been told by all of my AP teachers and my counselor.</p>
<p>go talk to your principal, counselor, and more people you can b<em>tch at. Tell them that most schools w/ AP do this seperately. Then find a school nearby that has it and say ull probably just transfer there (and make sure you flaunt your excellent student grades etc) and keep b</em>tching. </p>
<p>^APUSH and APEH cover two intro level college courses a piece, AP Vergil is the equivalent of a 5th or 6th semester college course, according to several of last years graduates who passed the Stats exam, AP Stats covered more topics than the class that they were placed in, and others whose university forced them to take intro bio because they were majors say that they are bored out of their mind. </p>
<p>It depends on the teacher and the university that one attends, but as a whole the AP Exams and classes are designed to be more challenging than intro level college courses, because if they were at the same level or lower, the university would be losing money.</p>
<p>AP classes are very different from college classes. Almost every AP test is based around multiple choice questions. Very few college classes are. I took both APUSH and AP Euro, and on both it was simple to get ~70/80 on the MC then write a simplistic essay to secure a 5. AP Calculus had a large number of simple MC questions. On a college math test, there are only a few free answer questions around which your entire grade will be based. They also tend to be complicated so that your ability to apply what you’ve learned is tested as much as what you’ve actually learned.</p>
<p>AP Stats is a very simplistic class, and yes the class it is equivalent to in college also tends to be very simplistic. Since those classes don’t include calculus, they aren’t real statistics courses and they are typically designed for general education. AP Biology is a different case because the rigor of that class will vary a lot according to the high school, and the rigor of the intro bio course will vary a lot according to the college.</p>
<p>For admission’s sake, I’d say feel free to take the Calc sequence at your CC. Calculus isn’t nearly as hard as people claim and it is novel to see a student with that much mathematics under their belt.
If you’re headed toward a career in engineering, science or applied mathematics, make sure that you are truly comprehending what you’re learning and will have a strong enough knowledge base to apply what you’ve learned to more complicated matters.`The same can be said for working for a five in BC not an understanding of calculus.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m definitely going to look into taking the AP Calc BC exam, and from what I’ve heard about the teacher I’ll probably do better than many students taking the class itself :P</p>
<p>Zapz:</p>
<p>My school district has had a huge budget cut and is switching from a four-block schedule to a six-hour schedule–they claim that it saves them money. Also, my school is going to be IB-certified in the next year or two, and AFAIK they need a six-hour schedule in order for it to be implemented correctly.</p>
<p>I’m going to go with taking it at the CC–mostly because it will allow me to get ahead my senior year, but also because it opens up two spots in my schedule to take additional APs. Thanks guys.</p>