I made the very tenative deciscion to go straight into AP Calc instead of doing pre-calc. my algebra 2 teacher offered me the choice and since its senior year, i thought that I might as well cram in another AP course since i am only taking 3 ap courses total in senior year (and my school only offers like 4 ap courses in total). should i do it? I had A’s all year long in algebra 2 but i wouldn’t say im the best at math. i know you have to self study some trigonometry beforehand though. Do any of you know like what specifically i should self study before ap calc? or do you have any tips/advice on what i should expect or plan for? any help is VERY much appreciated. thanks!
Are you going into Calc AB or Calc BC?
Review trig identities (ex. Sin x + Cos x = 1). Also review double angle identities and the unit circle. Reviewing logarithmic functions and rules may also help. I have a summer homework packet I could send via pm of interested. It has review of what I mentioned as well as additional content.
@kout727 NO! (Sinx)^2 +(cosx)^2 =1
I can’t believe I forgot the squares! Thank you
To skip precal is one thing but you are also skipping Trig? I say no.
@Sportsman88 Most of the time, trigonometry is bundled with the Precalculus course.
@ninodelbay My friend did exactly what you did (we are both sophomores currently), and he tested out of Precalculus. He said he did well on the AB subset of the AP exam, but he isn’t so sure about the BC part. I took Honors Precalculus this year, and we learned a lot of things my friend didn’t know, like matrices. Because it’s your senior year, you probably should skip Precalculus, but take AB. But be warned that you really need to know your stuff.
I can send all of our Precalculus homework via Dropbox if you want. They’re not (all) notes, but they have a lot of useful practice problems.
I skipped precalculus and took AP Calculus AB. To give you an example, I did better than everyone else who had taken precalc. It’s definitely doable because AB doesn’t cover polar and parametric equations. Also, the trig that we used in AB was learned in Math III (common core math progression is Math I, II, and III).
Now, skipping straight into BC would be a challenge, but definitely doable, too, depending on your skills in math.
Sorry all, i forgot to say that i was going into AP Calc AB!