D wants to jump math tracks for BC calc. Help?

I believe this is the issue. She is trying to get the list of topics but they are being a bit cagey. I get the feeling they really don’t want her to try this.

Perhaps her current precalculus teacher will tell her if the administration will not.

Or find a student in honors precalculus and ask him/her what topics (or what chapters of what book(s)) were covered.

D2 “jumped tracks” in math. She self taught herself a year of math (Algebra 2 & trig/pre-calc) over a summer, took & passed her high school challenge exams for those classes, enrolled in Calc BC as junior (didn’t take Calc AB), then took Calc 3 and linear algebra as a senior. D2 was a pre-med and a math major in college.

Not sure if calc BC will help with admission to BA/MD programs since med school admissions typically only requires 1 semester of calc. The required/preferred second math class for pre-meds is biostatistics or statistics–which is much more useful than Calc 2.

BTW, with the adoption of competency based admissions for med school, traditional course requirements have been abolished. Instead applicants are encouraged to challenge themselves. Med schools now require or “strongly recommend” applicants supplement any AP/IB credit with an equal number of additional upper level college credits in the same department if they want to be considered a competitive applicant.

Med school adcomms know that Calc BC = 2 semesters of calc so retaking Calc 2 if she has AP credit for it–bad idea. Looks like she’s padding her GPA–something adcomms don’t like and will ding her for.

So my math kid took regular pre-calc and we got him into B/C with a small fight. Not having honors pre-calc, he struggled for a little bit but worked his way through. Ironically, it was in Calc3 that he had to go back and figure out something that was skipped in the regular pre-calc class. IIFC, it was something to do with polar coordinates but the Khan academy got him up to speed.

Anyway, he is now a Math & CS major and just threw down an A in Real Analysis (with a 4.0 MATH/CS overall). That was by far the hardest course I ever took and assure you I did not not get anything close to an A. He did say he is done with pure math forever (no abstract algebra, topology, or complex analysis). It will be all applied math from now on (partial DifEQ and lots of data analysis and stats/probability type classes).

@WayOutWestMom

This is interesting. Every place we have seen, D has been discouraged from using her AP classes to “skip” beginning classes. So she has been advised to repeat Bio 1 and Chem1 etc., even though she will have AP credits in all those classes. Do those AP classes go on her college transcript? Is she getting bad advice?

http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/21534448/#Comment_21534448 (#67 through #69) may be worth a read (the next few posts may also be relevant).

Seems like it looks worse to repeat AP credit instead of taking higher level courses. But some colleges may not allow advanced placement (so repeating the AP credit may be required), and some may not show AP credit if it is repeated with a college course (so the repeat will be hidden from medical school application readers).

My S took pre calc as a junior and took BC calc as a senior. He also sailed through pre calc. He had no trouble with BC calc. Go for it.

Just because kids on cc ace the material like Gauss or Riemann (insert favorite genius mathematician here) does not mean other kids will. For ever kid that sails through calc, there are 99 that don’t. You of course know your kid the best, so take all these with a grain of salt.

Did she need any extra help to do as well as she did in precalc? How were her grades in her other classes? What’s the reputation of the teachers for these classes at her school? Is calc BC at her school an especially heavy workload? Is she generally a good time manager? Will she ask for help if she encounters trouble? If she and you feel good about it, go for BC. My girls both took precalc then BC and had no trouble at all. One took BC as a junior while also taking four other AP classes and acting in the school play (and more). She had to really manage time well, and yes she’s also great at math. But the time management really matters as the work gets harder.

If you want her to start AB this summer to see if she really is prepared, I would recommend Thinkwell for self-study.
http://www.thinkwell.com/instructor/product/calculus This course covers 2 semesters of cal. You can purchase as an independent studies student with no code for $150. Dr. Burger is a great teacher. She could use his videos for any additional review she might need outside of her classroom next yr.

If it turns out she needs to have more thorough pre-cal review, you can purchase their pre-cal course and let her jump in at the point she needs to review.

My concern would be that she is not used to the pace of honors math and may have to devote a lot of time to BC that she will need for other classes. My son sailed through the advanced math classes and struggled in honors due to the pacing until he learned how much he needed to study. But our HS is very competitive and BC calc gets thru all of the topics and kids do well on the exam. In contrast, another local district has a BC class but the kids are told to take the AB test as the teacher says he doesn’t get through all of the BC material.

If counselor will see check the “most rigorous curriculum” box, she may want to take AB and do well easily. If not and she is willing to self study this summer and spend more time on math, she should go for it.

This information about the counselor checking off a box for rigor is new to me. It has never been mentioned in any pre-college meeting. I will definitely ask about it. Is it one box for her entire high school career or are the individual boxes for each class or subject? Thanks!

In our high school the pre-calc classes usually start in on Calculus material in April, but my younger son had a teacher that got started earlier so that they all had covered the AB curriculum by June. If she hasn’t been exposed to calculus at all, I’d suggest she try to find an online class. I found it a very different way of thinking the first time I was exposed to it.

Kids in our system take AB or BC, not one then the other, but they have all had some of the AB curriculum no matter which calculus they take as seniors. She should not take BC unless she’s confident she can cover at least as much as the honors pre-calc did.

One option, if the school is being too stubborn, is to take AB, but self-study the topics on the BC test and take the BC test. This was something I and a few of my friends did since our school didn’t offer BC, and it was pretty reasonable.

I don’t see any reason to jump ahead to BC. D18’s HS has AB+BC as one class (two hours a day, I think that’s what people here call BC) and regular AB (one hour a day). This year they added a straight BC class (one hour a day). D18 took AB as a junior and the new BC this year. Got an A in both but I think she would have been better off taking AB as a senior … and learned more overall.

Of course, I don’t get the whole fascination with math classes here on CC. I think kids would be better off, in the long run, by trying a bunch of different things in HS.

@droppedit my daughter has tried lots of things in HS. She feels that she wants to push herself more in math.

re: post #34
It would be nice if students who want to major in a stem field could wait to take more the more advanced math topics in college. However, if they wait, depending on the university or college, they will find themselves behind. I really wish D2 had already taken Calc B/C by the time she hit her freshman year. Her physics II class would have gone a lot better if she had been concurrently enrolled in calc. III or differential. D1 had already taken all the engineering math by the time she took physics II and was able to get a high A in the class. She said even though the pre-reqs list calc II as required those students who had not already taken calc III really struggled.

@droppedit That is projection. Just bc that is what met the needs of your dd does not mean that is the right sequence for other students. Goodness, I have a kid who would have been bored crazy if he had had to take AB as a yr long course. That is a slow pace for strong math students. (And it really should not take 2 hrs per day to complete AB and BC in a single yr. AB is simply the equivalent of cal 1 and BC cal 2. Both are single college semester courses.)

I recommend she stick with AB. We were in the exact same position as you this time last year. D wanted to move into BC because she was not challenged in her pre-calc class - never had to study. Our district also pushed back hard and ultimately let her enroll only after she studied several chapters of the calculus text over the summer and took 4 exams on that material over the summer as well (those chapters are covered in April and May of junior year in our Calc BC pre-req class). This approach was good in that it gave her a structure with clear expectations for her summer work. We hired a tutor to help her and she met with him twice a week. It was very time consuming and at the end of the day I think her time would have been better spent working on her application essays. She was in 5 AP classes senior year and all of them had substantial summer work in addition to the calculus so it made for a hellacious summer. She has performed well in the class and feels she did well on the AP exam last week.

If your student was looking to apply to some top engineering programs I might answer differently but I don’t believe for the BSMD programs this will make much difference (AB vs BC). I think her performance in her science classes, her EC’s (BSMD programs look for meaningful medical-related EC’s), interviews and essays will be a bigger factor.

@gallentjill – has your D taken any CS classes in HS? Even the basic AP CS-P would work. I think that’s a more valuable tool to have in her toolkit than advanced calculus at this point.

@cheetahgirl121 – that sounds like a screw up on the college’s part. They shouldn’t have the pre-reqs wrong and end up with struggling students because of it!