My daughter got into a competitive STEM program at a private high school. She has always been good at math - scoring consistently above 90th percentile (mostly 97-98) in all her math classes, and on national standardized tests (including this spring) without any supplementation. She was supposed to take Algebra 2 in 9th, but her private school is recommending retaking Algebra 1 as freshman, geometry as sophomore, with Algebra 2 and precalculus combined in Junior year, and AP calc in senior year. The rest of the curriculum is very challenging including Engineering courses and an IB track. My daughter is pretty set on aerospace engineering, and I am trying to figure out if down the line, not having taken AP calc as a junior would be a disadvantage to her application. Not trying to push her into a workload that would be really difficult to manage, but also don’t want this to be a negative impact on her admission chances. Would appreciate any feedback on how important it is to take AP calc as a junior, vs a senior with steady progression and heavy AP/IB load otherwise.
Thanks
Not even CalTech has an expectation that a HS student take Calc in Junior year or before.
How important is having AP Calc junior year for competitive engineering programs
Vs senior year? Not important at all. No brownie points are awarded for taking as a junior.
Agree with the above. It is disappointing though that they are making her repeat if she hasn’t been struggling. It won’t make an admissions difference, but it will take away the advantage of being further ahead when starting college.
No US university requires or expect frosh applicants to complete calculus in 11th grade, and very few explicitly list calculus as a required or expected high school course (but, obviously, for highly competitive universities and math-heavy majors like engineering majors, a high school student who has the opportunity to take calculus should do so).
In terms of repeating math, how did she do in math previously? Did she try the old final exams of the high school’s math courses that they are trying to get her to repeat?
Thank you, that is encouraging to hear.
I just had her do a random algebra 1 exam. 30 questions, she has been in geometry this year so mostly unrelated material, no review. She answered 80% correctly. So not as high as she normally scores, but not sure it is bad enough to have to repeat the entire year. I think her course load will be pretty heavy with other really rigorous courses (especially during junior year), and that is part of the reason the program pushes AP calc to senior year for most kids. They revised their entire math sequence recently because they found that a lot of kids who have completed algebra 1 and geometry in middle school had gaps in knowledge that made it challenging in algebra 2 and even more so in AP calculus. There is a way around it, but I don’t want to make her workload even more difficult if this won’t affect her chances of getting into a good engineering program. She has a lot of other interests and extracurriculars, so not having the hardest math path along with the other really rigorous courses, is probably not the worst thing 
So they are recommending that she repeat both Algebra 1 and Geometry? My concern is that she will be bored unless the new school teaches the material in new and exciting ways. I guess different schools do things in different ways and I’m sure the math education she will get will be fabulous. And yes, no need to worry about Calculus in Junior vs. Senior year.
From my experience, this is not uncommon when moving from 8th in LPS to 9th at a top private. The math classes at these top privates are light years ahead of the LPS. But for my HS, they were based on placement tests, not blanket decrees.
One from the high school in question, or from a random high school or other source?
At our local HS (in MA) advanced students don’t take Calc B/C until senior year (a few accelerated kids take as a junior and do something at the local CC senior year, but it is only a tiny number). Nonetheless, quite a few are accepted to excellent engineering programs including Ivys and MIT. So, no, it shouldn’t make a difference. If your child isn’t accepted to any particular program it will not be because they didn’t take Calc as a junior.
That is exactly the explanation they gave. That their math curriculum was incredibly rigorous and from what they have seen especially over the last few years, even the kids who were admitted to their STEM program were struggling.
They did have two data points to determine placement - entrance exam that was used for admission and a math placement test. For my daughter the two were very discordant. The math placement test they admitted is really hard because they want to really make sure there is mastery, with the majority of STEM kids being placed in the same class as my daughter.
I posted because I was just trying to make sure that this was not going to affect her down the line as there are additional ways to help her get to AP calc by junior year but they require a lot of effort on her part, and some ruffling of feathers on mine. I was not sure it would be worth it).
I just went to Khan academy and did course mastery assessment for Algebra 1. I wish I could have access to the final exam from the school, but I don’t.
My daughter covered Algebra 1 in 7th grade and Honors Geometry in 8th. Her LPH provided honors Algebra 2 in 9th, Honors PreCalc in 10th, Calc BC in 11th and Multivariable Calculus in 12th. All in all an excellent math education. She’ll be going into engineering next year. She was challenged (and excelled) in every single one of these courses. I think that’s the trick. If you think your daughter will be challenged and do well in her high school math path, the rest will fall into place. Engineering is very math heavy and the math is challenging. If she is challenged and does well she will be set for an engineering undergrad degree no matter the exact path she takes to get there.
Well there’s two things that don’t belong in the same sentence. 
What it looks like is that this school has a 4-in-3-years math curriculum, where the traditional 4 years of high school math is compressed into 3 years. But this means that courses from other schools using a more traditional math curriculum do not line up to this school’s courses. I.e. algebra 1 elsewhere may cover less than “algebra 1” at this school, which may be algebra 1 plus some topics from algebra 2, so that “algebra 2” at this school gets a head start and can complete everything through precalculus. “Geometry” at this school may also cover some additional topics from more advanced courses in addition to what geometry ordinarily covers at other school.
But this arrangement does mean that algebra 1 courses taken elsewhere do not fit neatly into the system, so the student may have to repeat the previous course in addition to learning some new material in this school’s “algebra 1” course.
Most engineering schools want you to start math at Calc 1. Your fine.
I wouldn’t say that’s where they “want” you to start. I would say nearly all of their curricula are designed assuming that’s where students will start. Many have started higher and done just fine.
If a student has the opportunity, and they follow the @ucbalumnus rules to ensure they’re ready, the head start is a significant advantage. My son for example started in Calc III and Physics II. He was able to get a BS and thesis based MS in the time the average ME student at his school takes to get a BS alone.
Saying the same thing of course you can start higher but every school we visited or talked to assumed that the student would start at Calc 1, so in other words would of had like pre Calc as a minimum in high school. So they would be ready to start at Calc 1 in college.
This is worth paying attention to: a student can have top marks, really seem to have mastery & have gaps that don’t become apparent until Calc- where they aren’t initially recognized as gaps: it just looks like a student struggling to make the leap to the different mindset of calc. #beenthere/donethat.
Sounds as if the school has been thoughtful about this- trust them. It may be that 90% of the year is familiar- but 1) that 10% can matter a lot, 2) unlikely that if the school is that good it won’t take some work and 3) some breathing room in an a heavy courseload can be a good thing.
Because one is a Trade School?