Hi I’m a college student whose planning on transferring to Stanford University and had a question about trigonometry and pre calculus apparently not affecting your GPA? I am taking an advanced one semester class so I can finish both and then take Calc 1 and 2 next semester, but was told by a friend that apparently trig and pre calc are pre requisites for “most colleges” so it doesn’t affect your grade and that it is treated as a pass/fail on your transcript. Apparently this applies to UCs but I want to know if it applies to Stanford. If anyone could confirm this for me, I’d really appreciate it. Thanks!
Regardless of how it is treated in calculating GPA, it will be visible to admissions readers looking at your application. Of course, the better you learn the material, the better you will know it for subsequent courses that depend on it as a prerequisite. So do your best in the class regardless.
Note that calculus 1 is a prerequisite for calculus 2, so it is a bad idea to take calculus 2 at the same time as calculus 1.
taking 8 weeks of calc 1 and then 8 weeks of calc 2 after, not both at the same time
Eight weeks is not enough time to learn an entire semester of Calc I.
And it’s absolutely, positively NOT NOT enough for Calc II.
It sounds like a bad plan to me.
The reality is that you are very, very, very, very unlikely going to be accepted to transfer to Stanford. They acceptance rate is around 2%… and the majority have a significant hook (e.g. recruited athletes). High school records are still evaluated even for transfers, as are standardized test scores… and not having trigonometry until “college” indicates that your high school curriculum wasn’t that rigorous.
Stanford admits very low numbers of transfer students, and seems to emphasize non-traditional backgrounds of those whom it does admit. Example: http://news.stanford.edu/news/2014/september/class-new-students-091514.html