How does it look if you take Precalculus your senior year?

<p>I'm in an advanced precalculus class at a community college and the whole class is doing horrible (class average is 67%) because the professor is retarded and can't teach and isn't fair. So i decided to drop the class..like half of my classmates. How will it look if I take precalculus my fall semester of my SENIOR Year? Math isn't really my thing so I wasn't in it sophomore or junior year like a lot of people on this forum. </p>

<p>Will it lower my chances at the UCs, Cornell, Vanderbilt, Duke, or Rochester? I sure hope not...</p>

<p>I'm doing the same. Then again I am not looking at any Ivies.</p>

<p>It depends on your school. At my school math is tracked so that unless you were one of the top 10/15 kids in math you were not able to take Calculus senior year, you had to come in and take another course over the summer.</p>

<p>If you're applying for engineering, then it's a bad thing. Otherwise it is probably OK.</p>

<p>It's recommended to take 4-year of Math, 4-Science, 4-English, 4-Language, 4-Social Sciences. I believe Math and English are 2 most important subjects because they are basic. These subjects feed into a lot of other subject. But what can you do? it is too late to do anything now. So try the best you can moving forward.</p>

<p>If you're really desperate see if you can't take Pre-Cal + Cal in the same year, I'm sure there'd be a way to but it'd take a LOT of effort on your part and I dunno if you would think it's worth it?</p>

<p>I thought math was tracked in all schools ses. If you're looking into engineering or something like that, you're screwed. No easier way to say it. However, for other stuff you're fine, obviously not at an advantage though.</p>

<p>I've checked the CDS for about 60 schools so far and they all have, or most of them, one thing in common is the "rigor of secondary school", same with UCs, the number of courses in a-g is what they are looking for. That said, OP should have a lot of safeties in your college list. I'm surprised that your HS counselor let you skip 10th and 11th grade math.</p>

<p>Oopps sorry I made a mistake in my first post! I meant I didn't take PRECALCULUS my sophomore and junior years...I took geometry sophomore year and honors algebra2/trigonometry my junior year.</p>

<p>A friend of mine took Pre Calc senior year and got into Davis and Irvine.</p>

<p>Well, for one thing it's better to take pre-calc senior year than not at all.</p>

<p>Don't worry about it. I did the exact same thing and still got into selective Universities.</p>

<p>What selective Us are we talking about? (Curious as I'm in this same boat)</p>

<p>to the OP: same situation here and we are applying to very similiar schools. I am not interested in anything invovling math, and I take AP or honors classes in all other classes so I would hope it would not hurt. It makes zero sense for it to hurt me if I am not into math or science. I mean, an engineering student isn't hurt b/c he didn't take AP English and I would hope that there would be the same standards for somebody interested more in the humanities.</p>

<p>Does your school offer AP Cal?</p>

<p>If it does offer it, then taking precal instead of Cal senior year might hurt you for some of the more selective colleges, such as Stanford or Yale.</p>

<p>If your essays, ECs, and test scores are good, then I don't think it would harm you to not take Cal senior year. It's true that you can get into UCI and UCD without it.</p>

<p>I'm trying to find an H physics online, so I'm in the same dilemma as you. I'm trying to get 4 years of science. My school only offers regular physics and AP physics.</p>

<p>i know a girl who took pre-calc her senior year and is now going to duke</p>

<p>You DON'T HAVE to take Calculus in order to get into a good college, after all it IS a college class...But, In my personal humble opinion i think that if you consider yourself fairly good a t math then you should just go over like the 3 new things in Pre-calc that you learn all year by self studying...and then take Calculus..all Pre-CAlc is, is Adv. Algebra with a couple new things</p>

<p>You can't even reach AP Calc by senior year at my school unless you were put in a special accelerated track starting in 8th grade back in middle school. I better not be penalized for that, I think I'll have my counselor include a note about that.</p>

<p>"What selective Us are we talking about? (Curious as I'm in this same boat)"</p>

<p>NYU, BU, Emerson, and Northwestern</p>

<p>Take precalc & don't beat yourself up over it. You can't magically learn precalc before the year starts, so the next logical class for you to take is precalc. You have been taking classes in the order people take them ... you just weren't accelerated. Will it keep you from getting into elite schools? It doesn't really matter, because there is no way around the way things are. Plus, if you don't get into a particular school, that may not even be the reason. Even 2400 SAT kids who took Multivar Calc in high school get turned down by HYPS. Then again, you may get into every school you want to get into. There is no way to know. So chill out, take the class, and put together some killer apps (remember, the essay is especially important). Make schools want you!</p>

<p>As a response to my 1st post, I agree with kelsmom. Because you haven't taken Pre-Cal, take it this year. Not taking Cal might not harm you.</p>

<p>You would have 4 years of math anyway(assuming you took alg 1, geo, alg 2)</p>

<p>My transcript doesn't include Alg 1, so I have to take AP Cal. It only has Geo, Alg 2, and Trig.</p>