<p>College admission decisions in schools that don’t use a formula are a matter of gestalt. What impression does your app make to the interviewer? So it’s impossible to answer your question with a precise answer (eg. "you’ll get a 4.7% boost in your chances of admission) and yet most people would acknowledge that Calculus is seen as the more challenging class. Which means taking it makes your app stronger – by some unquantifiable amount.</p>
<p>Since this is an advice forum, I want to also add 3 bits of (unsolicited) advice. First, learning math is more like learning French than History. You read “The 3 causes of the American Revolution were…” and you immediately comprehend every bit of it. All it will take is a little review before the test and you’ll be able to find the right answers on a multiple-choice test or write an essay contrasting it with the 4 causes of the French Revolution. But in French, you read the vocabulary list just once and you’re going to flunk. It takes practice, lots of it, done almost daily. Math is the same thing. Almost nobody can read a calculus chapter once and be able to apply it; you need to work problem after problem for it to sink in. </p>
<p>The 2nd tip is expectations. In a college level math/science class, a good rule of thumb is to expect to spend 3 hours outside of class doing homework & studying for every hour in class. A typical college class meets 3x a week, so you should expect to spend 9 hours EACH week outside of class studying. If you make this commitment and really do it, studying being quiet time w/o phone calls or listening to music, I think you well earn a good grade in the class even if you’re not a math person.</p>
<p>Lastly is how to study. You just can’t learn math by reading the chapter. You need to work problem after problem, especially the ones you probably hate like word problems, to really learn the subject. Fortunately there is a resource that many people don’t know about; this is the “Problem-Solver” books such as “The Calculus Problem Solver”. The book is only about $20 and is a thick book of problems with fully worked solutions. You turn to the chapter that matches what you’re studying in class, cover up the answers, and start. Check each answer and keep working problems until you’re solving them correctly.</p>
<p>Nine hours a week and an outside workbook may not be what you had in mind, but I promise you that if you do this you will learn the material and get a good grade in the class and on the AP exam.</p>