<p>I want to have a finalized AP Calculus grade when I am applying to colleges, but I am taking Geometry in my freshman year. I need to get ahead over the summer.</p>
<p>How have CC posters done it in the past?</p>
<p>hey the way you can do it is by taking an online course such as:</p>
<p>FLVS
Keystone Online School (I go here)
K-12</p>
<p>I will warn you though taking math classes online is not exactly easy and it very easy to fall behind. I wish you the best of luck if you have any more questions feel free to ask :).</p>
<p>@brandigirl: how do you learn in an online school? Also, is Keystone Online School free or is it a school you have to pay for?
@Sinestro: do you think colleges will not accept you if you don’t take AP Calculus by 12th grade? I’m asking because I too am going to take geometry honors in 9th grade…</p>
<p>I was in a similar position. My only options were to take a course at a private school ~40 minutes away or take a CP course for students who failed out of alg 2/students going into the IB program. I took the CP course and self studied the alg. 2 honors text book and it worked out fine, you just need to be an independent learner/focused and motivated. Ask your counselor or head of math department at your school if there are any summer courses at nearby schools.</p>
<p>Well, have you ever heard of CTY? Because they have a three-week course where you independently study math, and it can help with placement. It’s a super awesome summer camp.</p>
<p>@Foodlover001: I am just aiming for the AP National Scholar dealie by the end of Junior, and I can only get that if I take AP Calc in my Junior year so I don’t have to take another math class.</p>
<p>no it is not free. The way you learn is by reading your text book watching videos and then taking test on the computer 
any other Q’s please post.</p>
<p>usually schools offer that course over the summer(my school offers H alg 2 and H precalc over the summer)</p>
<p>@Sinestro: What is the AP National Scholar Award? Also, if you take AP Statistics in junior year and AP Calculus in 12th grade, could you still get the AP National Scholar Award?
@brandigirl: How hard is learning classes online?</p>
<p>I would highly suggest against it, Alg 2 is pretty much the basis for any high level math course, by no means do you want to just get it over with or rush through it. If you want to succeed in Calc your Alg 2 knowledge should be rock solid.</p>
<p>@Ivygolfer: I’ve heard that from other people too…</p>
<p>Good point. Is Pre-Calc better to do over the summer?</p>
<p>@Foodlover001: You get it for taking 8 AP tests and getting 5’s on all of them. I just want it by the end of Junior year so it will show up on my applications.</p>
<p>They’re both a lot to do independently over the summer. Although there’s really no such thing as “precalculus,” mathematically speaking, the course that most high schools and colleges call precalculus is made up of some more algebra (often including a reteaching and extension of logarithms, exponential functions and rational functions from Algebra 2) and a whole bunch of trigonometry.</p>
<p>Trouble is, both algebra and trigonometry come before calculus because there’s a lot of both of them in first-semester calculus. (Well, beyond that, too.) But if you’re going to take one over the summer, I think I’d recommend precalculus. I think, however, that I’d have a very hard time doing it online. I think the best approach would be to take precalculus in the summer session at your local community college, and to expect to spend a lot of time on homework.</p>
<p>Trig is in my Geometry course and I do all my school with an online charter school in my district.</p>
<p>Its kinda hard because you have no teacher but think about it how much have you had to teach yourself because you have had a bad teacher? I mean it can get pretty frustrating some times when things get kind of rough , but usually you watch a few videos and you are good to go 
I like Keystone</p>
<p>My daughter took Alg 2 the summer after her freshman year, just as you are suggesting, because she wanted to get to BC Calc and her school requires AB Calc first (a stupid policy, in my opinion) and she, like you, just wasn’t going to have enough years otherwise. She actually just worked through the book, following the class syllabus and taking the class quizzes and tests. She had me, a math savvy dad, so that helped quite a bit (at least she had someone to grade the tests!), but mostly she just did it on her own. The deal with her school was if she could come in and do a decent job on the final for that class, she could go right into pre-calc. To her credit, she aced it. Obviously, this strategy won’t work for everyone, but it worked for her.</p>
<p>You may or may not have the luxury of an in-house person who understands Algebra 2, but perhaps you could find a tutor?</p>
<p>I will say that she really struggled with time management on this task, and, to be perfectly honest, learned over half the course in the last two weeks of the summer. And I’m not saying this is better than the various other options others have suggested, but it certainly was cheap!</p>
<p>Finally, regarding the importance of the subject matter and the need to really understand it, it’s quite true that pre-calc is largely algebra-2-only-moreso. So you will get a second bite at the apple on most topics in pre-calc. It didn’t seem to hurt my daughter–she did very well in calc and on the Math II subject test.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>No, a little bit of trig is in your Geometry course.</p>
<p>Really, I know what I’m talking about. I’m a math teacher.</p>
<p>@Sikorsky: I was very tired when I wrote that, so I was not at my best. :D</p>
<p>I am used to people on here not knowing what the hell they are talking about and acting like they are a cross between Terrance Tao and Jesus.</p>
<p>In my current math class, I don’t really have a teacher, it is all through ALEKS, and I just have to complete my problems and then I’m done. I could theoreticially talk to my math teacher, but I haven’t had to do that once this year except to fix a grade he entered wrong into the school’s system.</p>
<p>I’m not disputing any of that, Sinestro. I just mean to say, there’s a lot more to trigonometry than the right triangles and SOHCAHTOA that we teach in Geometry class.</p>
<p>take precalc over the summer, it’s probably the easiest math course I’ve ever taken and you should really take Alg2 during regular semesters.</p>