My friend and I are both attending the University of Connecticut. We are both Biomedical Engineer majors. She has taken AP Calc senior year. I did not.
When she signed up for courses, she enrolled in Calc I because she didn’t know her AP Score. When scores were released, she found out that she received a 5.
She emailed her adviser and asked to be switched into Calc II, but her adviser recommended taking Calc I because of her math placement score.
In order to enroll in Calc I or Calc II, a passing score of 76 is required. I scored a 77, and she scored a 78. It is unknown whether or not this placement test is actually predictive of our mathematical abilities, since even the brightest students of her AP Calc class also received a score of 78-81.
When she asked a current math TA at UConn, he told her to take Calc II because she showed mastery of Calc I. When she asked her friends, most of them (including me) told her to move into Calc II.
When she asked her AP Calc teacher, he told her to retake Calc I since she’s an engineering student, but he also believes that she’ll do great in Calc II.
Here are factors that she wanted to consider:
Materials Covered - She is afraid that AP Calc does not cover the engineering Calc I curriculum, and she does not want to be set behind because she decided to take Calc II without covering everything in Calc I.
Money - By skipping to Calc II, she’ll save money since she recieved AP Calc credit.
GPA - She wants to get into the Honors Program. In order to do that, she’ll need a 3.4 GPA at the very least by the end of freshman year. Calc I would be a GPA booster, Calc II might not be.
Time - She doesn’t want to waste time reviewing things that she already knows, and would rather just move onto Calc II. That way, she can take more classes earlier on, and free up time later on in college. Also, by taking Calc II, she would have less free time around noon, but more free time during the evening (after 5).
What are your thoughts?