I think this is true for kids, like the OP’s kid, who are on track to take AP calculus as seniors, as well as those who are on track to take precalculus as seniors.
I am not convinced that it is true for students who have completed AP calculus before senior year. I think that college admissions officers probably understand that the math courses available to these students may not be appropriate for every individual. For example, if a student is headed into a major that either requires (1) calculus-based statistics or (2) no statistics, taking the non-calculus-based AP Statistics might not be the best use of the student’s time.
Right…the parent has some issue with the AP courses.
The student will need calculus for the above listed majors…but he can take calculus in college too. Doesn’t have to be in high school.
However, I also don’t understand the issue. This issue is a parent issue. The kid wants to take calculus, and is actually enrolled in it now (according to other threads). So…let him take calculus. It’s a course he likes, and he wants to take.
OP - I’m going to assume that your son is planning on applying as a STEM-y candidate to a fairly selective college (otherwise just ignore this). In that case, I’d strongly encourage your son to take AP Calculus next year. Here are some thoughts -
College - If he majors in an ABET Engineering program / Computer Science (you mentioned coding as an interest) / a physical science then he’ll be at a disadvantage in college (not for biological sciences though). At selective colleges I’d say 90+% of STEM students have taken AP Calculus (probably 20-40% have even taken multivariable in high school but they usually retake this). Yes, technically it’s possible to graduate if you start at Calculus I but only just barely – many Engineering majors have only limited room for electives and needing to take a year of introductory Calculus will reduce this room even more. Plus you’re paying a whole lot more $$$'s in college for him to learn something he could have learned in high school.
Multivariable calculus / linear algebra is a pre-requisite or co-requisite for many classes, so he’ll be drudging away in the Math/Physics/Chemistry core for the first two years and won’t be able to take the “real” classes in his major until late sophomore year in college. These core classes are often large lecture classes with low grading curves (or may even be weedout classes) and many students find them to be uninteresting relative to what they want to actually major in. Plus, he’ll be a year behind most of his classmates and won’t be taking classes with them or forming study groups with them.
Admissions – it sounds like your counselor is telling you she won’t check the “most rigorous” box, which can be a problem. Things have definitely changed in the last 20 years. Selective colleges will sometimes admit intended STEM majors who haven’t taken calculus, but mostly because it’s not available to them because they come from a poor school district or an impoverished country. Not taking calculus when it’s available to him (at a STEM academy no less) and having the counselor not check the most rigorous box will definitely hurt his application.
In addition to wanting to explore, it sounds like either you or your son is also concerned about the work load or pacing of the classes. I’d subscribe to the “Bend not break” philosophy – it’s good for kids to be challenged but not to an unhealthy point. High school is an important age and kids need to learn how to handle challenges. Only you and your son can make the right decision here, but frankly it sounds like this might be more your concern than his.
Not taking calculus may give him room to explore a bit in high school, but it’s at the cost of having less chance to explore in college so it’s not a free option. Taking programming as an elective sounds very worthwhile given his interests. But if it’s a choice between AP Calculus and programming then I’d definitely choose AP Calculus. It’s easier for him to explore programming on his own or during the summer than calculus, and colleges will value the rigor of calculus more. (In retrospect it might have been better not to have taken Statistics if he wanted to free up a slot, but that may not have been an option and anyway it’s water under the bridge.)
Your son’s school has block scheduling, right? This probably explains why they have “Regular” Calculus before AP. Block scheduling may be fine for some subjects, but IMO it doesn’t work very well for calculus – it’s a little like saying if a 1 woman can give birth to a baby in 9 months then 9 women should be able to have a baby in 1 month. You can only cram so much into someone’s head so fast. The regular calculus class probably only covers a portion of the AB curriculum.
I’d also put a lot of value on the continuity of taking some kind of math all four years. If he wants to major in a STEM field then it’s probably a mistake to take a year off from math.
Am I missing something? It’s the father who doesn’t want his kid to take calculus as a senior. The kid wants to take calculus. I’m not sure the kid wants to explore at all. It sounds like this is a parent wish.
Our district offers AP AB Calc and something called “Applied Calculus” with is considered a standard, year-long calculus course. Only 10% of our kids take AP AB Calc unfortunately, because our math department is not that strong and kids get counseled out of it or don’t do well enough in honors pre-calc to be recommended for it.
There’s another side to this somewhat crazy question: What, exactly, is this “exploring” the OP wants her kid to do?
I don’t know what high school this kid goes to (except it’s some sort of STEM academy), but I have never heard of a high school course, other than something like photography or filmmaking, that actually made some significant difference in a student’s life plan. Unless his school is really extraordinary, the OP’s son is not likely to get meaningful additional insight into potential majors or careers from a single high school course.
Calculus is a basic tool for almost any area of focus in the sciences, math, social sciences, or engineering. It’s a skill that vastly enhances a kid’s ability to explore different fields in college.
From the OP’s other posts, it seems that the student’s interests change often (although the interests mentioned do require calculus), the student was two years ahead in math (took precalculus in 10th grade, but took statistics and presumably-less-rigorous non-AP calculus in 11th grade), but the OP is opposed to him taking AP calculus in high school for some reason (something about exploring interest – what about allowing the student to explore interest in math?).
When I went to high school, there was no question that any student two years ahead in math was a top math student and would have gone to AP calculus BC in 11th grade (and no high school math in 12th grade since there were no more high school math courses, though commuting to a nearby college for math may have been a possibility).
STEM prospies should definitely take BC is they have done well in prelacy/trig. Otherwise, they’ll be behind in many colleges, and many Frosh will have had Calc. Not all place into the next course, some will repeat Calc in college for the “easy” A. In any event, the curve is much more rigorous in college bcos the competition is much steeper.
@ucbalumnus,
Yes, I realize that the math sequence for all college engineering majors start with calculus AB. And I know that kids either retake 1st sem calculus in college to ease their way into college by essentially repeating a class, or go to the next level of calculus in college. However, I didn’t realize that HS kids actually were accepted into Engineering programs without taking calculus. I always assumed that kid had to prove that they were in an advanced math track to get into an engineering program. Again, my viewpoint was skewed since both of my arts/humanities kiddos took AP Calc BC during their sr yr in HS, since we were told by our HS GC that they had to have 4 years of HS math, and they have aptitude in math.
YoHoYoHo wrote:
I actually did not realize that there are kids who are admitted to engineering programs who have not taken calc in HS. I’ve learned something new today.
If you look at the course plans for engineering at many universities, they start with calculus 1.
It certainly can be advantageous from a schedule flexibility standpoint to start in a more advanced math course (that allows starting physics earlier, which allows starting engineering courses earlier). But it is not required, so a student and parent need not think that s/he is shut out of engineering due to a math placement decision made in 7th/8th grade that puts him/her on a track to take precalculus in 12th grade.
Obviously, your arts/humanities kids are well rounded at the high school and college frosh level, as evidenced by taking the highest level AP math (just like engineering kids who take AP English and history in high school).
Remember also to consider non-elite students who attend non-elite universities where engineering is offered. It is likely that these non-elite universities have engineering majors who mostly have just completed precalculus (not calculus) in high school. Since only a small percentage of engineering students attend elite universities, be careful not to assume that all students and universities are similar to the elite ones in terms of students’ math placement.
My engineering degrees daughter took culinary arts her senior year of HS. Yes, she was taking math too…precalculus. we thought culinary arts was meaningful. And she has used the info from that course many times since she took it. In fact, it’s the onky HS course for which she still has her notebooks, and notes.
Putting aside choice of major or whether it is AP Calculus or another math, most “elite” schools will want kids to continue in all core subject areas in their Senior year. That is the expectation. Choosing to do otherwise is an option of course but it is not without risk.
If that doesn’t leave room in the schedule for interesting electives, there is always the summer.
My son also exhausted the math classes available in his high school by 11th grade. Although he could have taken more math at a nearby college, he didn’t want the hassle, and he was busy with other activities. Since he aced all of his SAT math tests (800’s), and got nearly as high scores on everything else, I don’t think his stopping math in 11th grade affected his college application success at all.
ADDED: at UChicago, students are tested in language and math to determine what level or series of language and math classes they should enroll in. My son “placed out” of language and didn’t take any more in college. He placed in the middle level of math (didn’t review or prep for these placement exams). Perhaps if he’d have had math in his senior year of high school, his placement test would have been at the highest level. But I don’t think this has mattered at all to his career. His concentration was in economics.
Elite schools may want students to take a schedule that includes five rigorous academic courses in their senior year, but do they have to be one apiece in each of the five areas? I don’t think so.
I have known many high school seniors, including some who were accepted into very elite colleges, who did not take courses in all five areas as seniors. For example, they may have dropped their foreign language (after having completed level 4 or 5) to make room for an extra science course. Or, if they didn’t like science, they may have left science out of their schedules as seniors (after having taken biology, chemistry, and physics) in favor of an extra AP social studies course. I don’t see anything wrong with this.
Here are some statistics from the AP Calculus Exams (2014 test dates, US Students) that might be useful to gauge what most students are doing nowadays. They show the breakdown of how many students receive each score (1,2,3,4,5) by grade level -
About 50,000 students enter college with a 5 on the BC exam; about 83,000 enter with a 3 or better. For comparison, I think the total entering classes of the USNWR Top 20 national universities is about 32,000 students across all majors, not just STEM.
Between 190,000 - 250,000 students each year have a 3 or better on either the AB or BC exam (we can’t tell exactly how many because some students take the AB exam one year and the BC exam the next year.)
Almost 40% of students scoring a 5 on the BC exam are in 11th grade or younger - over 18,000 last year. Of these, 3,266 get a 5 as a sophomore or younger.
To put these numbers in perspective, in the US about 1,600,000 bachelor’s degrees are awarded each year, of which about 260,000 are in a STEM field. So I think it’s fair to say that most STEM students will have gotten a 3 or better on an AP Calculus exam before entering college. And that’s across all bachelor degree granting institutions; for selective colleges the proportion will skew much higher.
So I’d say if a student is aiming to be a STEM major at a selective college and their school offers AP Calculus, they should definitely take it. Of course, there are exceptions - there are always exceptions (pace Epimenides!) - but as they say,
I agree with your general point, al2simon, but I can’t reproduce your numbers. We have about about 165,000 kids getting a 3 or better on the AB. We have some 83,000 getting a 3 or better on the BC, but we don’t know how many of those kids also took AB. So we have a minimum of 165,000 students with a 3 or better in calculus, of whom some are just kids who are smart overall and won’t major in a STEM field-- they took 13 APs and will major in Philosophy or Econ or something. So, maybe the majority of kids who get STEM degrees had 3 or better in AP Calculus, but I wouldn’t say it’s a sure bet.
Nonetheless, an elite college is going to look at the STEM application of a kid who could have taken AP Calculus but didn’t, and they’re going to want a very good reason. “I wanted to explore other areas” won’t be taken as a good reason, unless the other areas are something like “I was training for my Olympic gold medal and doing cancer research.”
CF - For the lower bound, I took the number getting a 3 or better on the BC exam plus the number of seniors getting a 3 or better on the AB exam. This gave 191,620. (I’m assuming that no one who gets a 3 or better on the BC exam takes the AB exam the next year, which I think is a pretty good assumption. Also, the AB and BC exams are offered at the same time, so almost no one can take both the same year.)
For the upper bound, I just added the total number getting 3 or better on the BC exam to the total number getting a 3 or better on the AB, giving 247,603.
And you’re right that many of those students who get a 3 or better on one of the exams don’t become STEM majors, so we can’t figure out the proportion exactly, but I’d say a half or so across all institutions is a decent guess. Anecdotally, I would say that I have two STEM major kids at HYPSM right now, and they both reported that not a single person in their first “real” class in their major (meaning classes that pretty much only those who are going to declare the major take) didn’t have AP Calculus (or the international equivalent).
I think even though the elites admit a few students who are potential STEM majors who didn’t have the chance to take calculus in high school, for the most part these students end up majoring in something else. The ramp-up curve is just too steep unless they’re naturally extremely gifted, and those kids usually find a way, by hook or by crook, to take calculus.
I see, al2simon. That makes sense-- although some schools only give credit for 4 or better, so a student with a 3 in BC as a junior might take AB as a senior, already knowing what school they are going to and wanting the AB 4 or 5 in order to get a semester of math credit. But I don’t know if that happens.
On the one hand, I agree emphatically that no one is shut out of an engineering major, or another STEM major, due to not taking calculus in high school. No one should feel that way. There are always options. At my university, we have run a review of the curriculum to make sure that it is realistically possible for a student to complete a degree of choice within 4 years. For the STEM fields, though, we assume that the student starts in Calc I or higher math.
On the other hand, I think it is a tremendous advantage to consolidate one’s knowledge of math topics before needing to apply them in other STEM courses. From the experiences of the students that I have advised, electricity & magnetism is the crunch point. I think a student is far better off having a clear understanding of multi-variable (vector) calculus before taking that course (div, curl, grad, and all that).
Students deal with the feeling that they are “behind” in different ways. For some, it is a motivational factor, and they thrive. For others, it is demoralizing, and it’s an extra hurdle. In my opinion, if a student plans to major in a STEM field at a top 20 school, the student is disadvantaged (these days) by not taking AP Calc in high school. If the high school does not offer AP Calc, its absence will not count against them in admissions. But it will put them behind the majority of their fellow students when they arrive, with regard to their math experience.
Also, I should mention that continuity of math courses in high school seems to be more important for college performance than the specific level reached. In the high school years, a break from math usually is detrimental to facility in math later on. (Of course, if the student does not plan to major in a STEM field, this is irrelevant.)