<p>I was just wondering if precalculus is necessary to do well in AP Calc AB because I'm allowed to skip precalc and go straight to AB as a junior. Is this a bad decision?</p>
<p>Yes, that would be a very bad decision</p>
<p>It’s not absolutely necessarily but it provides a good foundation. Some people at my school actually double up and take both precalculus and Calc BC in the same year.</p>
<p>I don’t think your school would allow you to skip precalculus if they didn’t feel you were ready for calculus. If your school allows you to skip, then your Algebra 2 curriculum is probably deep enough to cover all the prerequisites for calculus.</p>
<p>It can get confusing because not all schools have the same Precalculus curriculum. In a lot of schools, precalculus is an extended, in-depth algebra class with trigonometry and a couple of other topics. But if your Algebra 2 course already covers there topics, then there’s really no reason why you shouldn’t be able to jump into calculus.</p>
<p>Just make sure you have a solid understanding of functions (polynomial, rational, logarithmic/exponential) and their composites, graphing, domain and range, trigonometric functions, inverse trig functions, and trigonometric identities. Also, you don’t need these for AB, but you might want to go over them if you plan on doing BC: sequences & series, parametric equations, polar coordinates, and vectors.</p>