<p>???</p>
<p>You don’t provide enough facts. First, are you going into a STEM major? If so, completion of calculus in high school is strongly encouraged, if not expected. If you are not going into a STEM major, completion of calculus may not affect your admission chances as much. Second, what type of schools are you applying to? Top tier, mid-tier, etc? The more competitive the school, the more the admissions office want to see students who have challenged themselves with the offerings at their high school. At any rate, it is important to note that your admission to a school rarely comes down to one test score, one class, one grade, etc.</p>
<p>Rather than posting a bunch of threads here about what you don’t have. Go over to the chances forum, tell them what you have taken, where you want to apply and have at it. No one can assess your chances based on what you haven’t done and isn’t that what you really want to find out </p>
<p>@blprof This thread was accidentally left incomplete. I am not going into a STEM major, and I will have completed calculus but it will be an honors course and not AB or BC. </p>
<p>I ask this specifically in regards to top/mid-tier schools (Cornell, NYU, CMU, Michigan, BC), especially Cornell because that is my #1 choice and my ED school though my chances are rather mediocre. </p>
<p>@qialah I have posted in the chances forum, numerous times. But this is not asking about my chances and is a question better suited for this forum.</p>
<p>For Cornell, the importance of Calculus in high school depends on the college. Some require it, some recommend it. i</p>
<p>Calculus that is less rigorous than AB seems like an odd choice, given that you are a year ahead in math. AB covers material at a slower pace than college calculus or BC does, so a course less rigorous than AB may not look anything like the “most demanding” course selection available to you.</p>
<p>I too am confused by you taking a calculus math class that is not AP Calc AB, which is considered the less rigorous compared to AP Calc B/C. That being said, if you are positioning yourself not as a math/science student, and you are taking rigorous courses in your other subjects, then as long as you have some kind of calculus class is better than skipping calc and taking statistics instead.</p>
<p>At our college prep school, BC Calc is for the students who are way out there in space. The department head said it’s the “hair on fire lane”. And almost all the students have tutors because it’s so rigorous. So AB Calc or BC Calc? Depends on the rigor of your school, and the colleges will see the school profile to know. My son is a CS major and was in the AB lane, which was rigorous. However, he is retaking Calculus in college and is grateful that he took it in high school because he’d be in bad shape if he hadn’t. If you aren’t a STEM major, then APs and honors in other subjects will be fine on your transcript.</p>
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<p>When I was in high school (a non-elite public high school where about a third of graduates went to four year colleges, mostly state schools), the only calculus course there was BC, offered to students who were a year ahead in math (i.e. precalculus as high school juniors). It was not considered excessively difficult, and the better students did score 5 on the AP test and go on to subsequent math courses in college without repeating calculus in college.</p>
<p>It depends on your high school and your ability. If your school does offer that and you are able to take it without hurting your GPA, you should definitely go for it. It would be more useful for STEM majors. Don’t focus only on admission. If you do get great score on the AP exam, you will have a good placement and earn credits. Most engineering schools do not expect entering freshmen to have Calculus already, but having some Calculus knowledge, or even better, placement into Calculus 2 or 3 would really help the student.</p>
<p>@ucbalumnus: I am not sure when you were in high school, but our high school is in Silicon Valley, full of CS/Engineering offspring, and BC lane here is intense - usually the parents have a career related to extreme math. We have 5 lanes of math, and for the AB&BC lanes, have a couple of created classes that aren’t even offered at other schools. My son was in the AB lane, which ended with AP Calc AB and he got a “C” in the class but a 5 on the AP test. One only needs to score 60% to get a 5 on the Calc AP exam. My son tested so he could have skipped a semester of Calc at university but we didn’t know what to expect from college and didn’t want him creamed. Plus, can’t compare high school math to college math - it depends on the rigor of the math curriculum at the school. </p>
<p>I would not advise a student to skip into Calc 2 unless he’s already taking college math in high school.</p>
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<p>Seems like the teachers in your school are harsh graders, or the course has been made more difficult than a typical calculus AB course. But why are there five math tracks? More typical is to have two – regular and honors – with a further split between AB and BC for AP calculus (which would be what honors track math students take after honors precalculus).</p>
<p>Regarding needing only a 60% to get a 5 score, that is not too different from many college courses, where instructors put difficult problems on tests, but “grade on a curve” when the score distribution is low. They are not constrained to load up tests with easy problems so that C students can get 70% of them correct.</p>
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<p>A student eligible to skip calculus 1 (e.g. through AP credit) at the college s/he attends should try the old calculus 1 final exams from that college. That way, s/he can find out how well s/he knows the material from the college’s expectation, and can make a more accurate placement decision than just guessing.</p>