Well, from the point of view of my school, my calculus teacher makes the class extremely hard, almost college level hard. While I expect that your situation will be different, many people who skip AB at our school often start off with Fs in BC. If you do plan to take BC your sophomore year, make sure to be ready to take it on. Many people at my school think BC as an easy class, then drop the class 2 weeks later due to it being far more difficult than their expectations.
Best of luck.
@ichen21 Wow, that seems very different from my school’s Calc BC class. I’ve heard that my school’s Calc BC class is pretty easy, probably because the teacher is very good at what he does. I had him for Math 3 last semester and he was the best teacher I’ve ever had (he even won Teacher of the Year at our school this year).
Some schools spend 1 year on AB, then the second year review the B part then spend most of the year in the C part.
In this system, skipping AB is hugely detrimental.
At other schools, students choose AB OR BC. The BC class includes AB and C all in one year.
@MYOS1634 I don’t really feel like I’m skipping the class because I’m learning it with the whole course on Khan Academy. It really feels like I’m learning more through Khan Academy than I would in a class just because of how good of a teacher Sal Khan is. That’s just my personal opinion though, and I see why it could be detrimental to not take Calc AB in a class.
I was describing two school systems’ set up: one where ABC is done over 2 years, one where it’s done over 2 semesters. If you’re confident you’ve covered AB through Khan Academy, you won’t have “skipped” AB. However some students confuse both systems and go into BC expecting the “AB” segment to be included, when in fact most of the class focuses on the C and they’ve never studied AB…
@MYOS1634 Oh OK, I apologize for my misunderstanding of what you said. For my school, AB is a prerequisite for BC, so I thought you meant that I was “skipping” AB by self-studying, which would be “detrimental”. Sorry