Is a Math in 12th grade really Neccesary?

Parents Forum
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Context matters to admissions officers. If a kid went to a STEM academy and completed the prerequisites to take AP Calculus (AB or BC) in 11th grade, and chose not to take it, that’s a lot different than if the kid went to a small high school with 200 students where it wasn’t offered. I’d be curious what box a counselor would check on the strength of course schedule box for a student who passed on a challenging math senior year. Around here it would probably not be one of the two highest boxes.

College aspirations also matter. My state’s flagship happily admits student’s to the engineering program who haven’t had calculus, but from what I’ve heard, they have nearly a 50% washout rate from engineering by the second year. I hear students say that even though they took really challenging courses (including AP Calc and at least one AP science) in high school, engineering coursework was hard. A friend who teaches in the engineering school has observed that students who hadn’t had both physics and calculus seem to have a tougher time making it through the first two years.

But, the OP’s son may have no interest in pursuing a STEM major.

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I think for most majors it’s make it or break it freshman year and sometimes first semester sophomore year. That’s why many colleges do not have kids declare until sophomore spring. Drive and determination is a big chunk of what causes a kid to succeed or fail especially in engineering. There are kids that just crumple under pressure - they never had pressure in high school and now in college they simply don’t know how to pick up and continue on. Also successful engineers come in two flavors (in my opinion) the ones that can just knuckle down and learn the material and those that have brains wired to ‘get’ complexities and strategies. The second type often does really well in physics and would probably find success in finance or economics. My son “gave up” Calc in High school to fit in AP English, AP Stats and AP Economics during senior year because they all interested him. I would never have held him back from studying what he found interesting in K-12 simply to get a “leg up” in college Calc I when it’s been clear for years and years that he “wanted” engineering. That was never a question. Now if there is an undecided kid, perhaps taking Calc in high school might help them make a decision whether or not they have the guts and soul for Engineering, but it’s certainly not an absolute requirement.

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I don’t think so either. My older son didn’t take a history course his senior year. Instead he took AP Economics which also covered the NYS Government requirement. Even more sacrilegious he took neither AP nor honors English. Instead he took an English elective, Linear Algebra, Astrophysics (honors), AP Chem, AP Latin and the AP Econ. He got into Harvard. Obviously it was still a very rigorous schedule and he had other things to bring to the table - scores, grades and extensive computer programming experience.

My younger son dropped Latin senior year, but had AP classes except for English also. He took Calc BC and Physics C despite having no intention of going into a STEM field. Didn’t have quite the scores and grades of older son, but got into pretty selective colleges too.

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I’d advise a kid who was going to go into engineering to skip AP Stats and take something else instead, and wait to take calc-based Statistics in college. Just like Physics, the calculus-based version makes so much more sense.

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My son will be taking calculus next year as a junior and I’m wondering whether if he doesn’t have math on his schedule as a senior it matters or not. He’s a music guy and would rather fill out his schedule with advanced music classes

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If calculus is the top level and most rigorous option (e.g. school offers a choice of AB and BC and he takes BC as a junior), then it is certainly understandable if he does not take math in senior year after exhausting the school’s offerings (though if he really wants to continue in math, he can investigate whether taking additional math at a local college is doable).

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When I was in high school, having calculus could be viewed as “a leg up,” because it was relatively rare for high schools to offer calculus. This was true in my state. High schools in the Northeast, and some other locales may have been different, back then.

Now, however, I think it is not correct to view taking calculus in high school as having “a leg up.” It is fairly common.

I am really emphatic that it makes a whole lot of sense for most STEM majors to take electricity & magnetism in physics after multi-variable calculus, and not concurrent with it. If I had a young relative who did not take calculus in high school, and could only graduate in 4 years if those courses were taken concurrently, I would strongly advise the student to consider a 5-year undergraduate degree. Classes are very much better when the student is well-prepared. It is true that in some branches of engineering, the student will not need to go further in E&M than the calc-based introductory physics course on that topic, so it’s just necessary to get through it, rather than being necessary to master it. Also, I know that there are students who have taken the courses concurrently–some on CC. Still, I really advise against it, if the E&M course is a “real” one.

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In the case of squiddymom’s son, I agree, no need for math senior year.

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The biggest group of STEM majors is biology majors, and they usually take a physics sequence with light calculus or no calculus (and they usually do not take multivariable calculus). Engineering technology majors (the often-ignored T in STEM) may also take less rigorous physics and math courses compared to engineering majors. Math, statistics, CS, IE, and some other majors may not need E&M for future work, so it may not be as critical for them to wait until after multivariable calculus – and they may also have enough schedule flexibility to delay physics E&M without delaying graduation.

Presumably, you mean those majors where a strong understanding of E&M is necessary for future work, such as those majoring in physics, EE, MSE, and NE. But these would not be “most” STEM majors.

Not all students and their families can afford the extra semester or year, especially if scholarships or financial aid get reduced in the extra semester or year.

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@mackinaw‌: The University of Chicago doesn’t have a “middle” math track. It has 8 or 9 different possible placements, depending on how one counts. Five of them are some variety first-year calculus, but the options range from remedial pre-calculus to an analysis seminar that vies with Harvard’s Math 55 for the title of most advanced, intensive freshman math course in the nation. (It’s extremely unlikely that another year of high school math would have placed your son into that.) Students are given input into their own placement; most are offered a choice, often several options. One path that evoked universal enthusiasm from the students I have met who took it is a special, very challenging inquiry-based Honors Calculus section for which a 5 on the AP Calculus BC test (or equivalent test results) is a prerequisite. As far as I can tell, the vast majority of students there took calculus in high school, but less than 10% place out of calculus altogether, and as far as I can tell few or none of the ones who place out of calculus are students who took any form of calculus in 12th grade.

Its Economics Department offers many paths through the major, some of which require comparatively little math beyond basic calculus, and others of which require graduate-level sophistication. Students who want to pursue PhDs in economics are advised to major in math rather than (or in addition to) economics itself.

The point of this is not so much to talk about Chicago as to illustrate that, while 12th grade calculus (or higher) is certainly not an admission requirement anywhere, missing 12th grade calculus can make a real difference. Also, contrary to the OP’s belief, it’s not the case that students who repeat calculus in college are “easing into” anything; at least at some colleges, there’s a vast difference between what they teach as first-year calculus and what’s in the AP course. Which doesn’t mean the AP course is not worth taking.

My child, the University of Chicago English major, who never for a moment considered majoring in anything remotely STEM-related, took non-AP calculus in 11th grade and no math her senior year in high school, then two quarters of the lowest level calculus course at Chicago. She’s been out of college more than half a decade. One of the few things she would change if she could re-live her life would be taking more math in high school and college.

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Actually, completing AP AB calculus or its equivalent is an admissions requirement for some programs, such as Cornell’s Engineering school. If the student’s high school doesn’t offer calculus, Cornell recommends taking it during senior year at a local or community college.

http://www.engineering.cornell.edu/admissions/undergraduate/faqs.cfm

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However, the list of colleges, or majors in colleges, that require entering frosh to have had high school calculus appears to be very small.

Caltech
Cornell engineering
Harvey Mudd

Some indicate specifically mention that taking high school calculus is ideal or recommended, although that should be obvious when calculus is available to a high school student who is applying to a college or major which requires calculus (i.e. taking the most rigorous available math when aiming toward a math-using major makes sense anyway):

MIT
Penn engineering or business
WUStL engineering, business, or architecture

Bottom line is, not having high school calculus available to the student won’t stop admission to the vast majority of colleges. But if it is available to a student who is interested in a calculus-using major or is applying to highly selective colleges, choosing to take calculus in high school is the generally preferred choice.

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There are really two different considerations, assuming that your S’s pre-Calculus math has prepared him for AP Calculus:

(1) You want your child’s GC to be able to indicate that he is taking the “most rigorous” academic curriculum offered at his high school. The Common App school report form that is required from the GC clearly asks this question, along with standard “transcript” type items. If AP level Calculus is offered at his high school, he should not be discouraged from taking it or this box doesn’t get checked and it will reflect on your son’s application. Almost every college we visited made a point of clarifying that “rigor” is relative. If your school offers 20 AP classes, the student should be taking a good sampling of them. If your school offers 5 AP classes, it’s a different situation. If your school offers no AP classes, that will not hurt the student so long as he generally takes the most challenging courses.

Here’s the one Duke asks for: http://admissions.duke.edu/images/uploads/process/school_report.pdf

I think it follows the standard format but it’s the one we’re most familiar with.

I suspect your GC is telling him that not taking math senior year will reflect poorly on him when compared to other students in his high school. If he is inclined to take more math, but for some reason does not want to take Calculus, then he might consider AP Stats as his quantitative class.

(2) Does he take AP Calculus AB or BC.

I wanted our D to take AB. Both AB and BC are year-long courses at her high school. But because both are APs, they would carry the same grade point values and meet the rigor. Because it is supposed to cover less material (equivalent to Calc I in college), I thought AB would be a better choice if, for no other reason, she might have less stress during college app season. She insisted that she wanted to take BC. She seems to have a good teacher and is getting more high Bs than low As. Often, I wondered if she should have selected AB, but I did not comment further.

She will be attending Duke and we are looking at math requirements for her intended major through the B.S. route, which requires more math. If she scores a 4 or 5 in BC, she will satisfy her math requirements. She still has to take 2 quantitative courses, but she can take Stats and something else. Had she taken AB and scored sufficiently high, she would still have to take Calculus II. Along with not sloughing off this semester, I know she’ll prepare like mad for the BC test in May. The incentive is there.

So, while it may be early and your S may not yet know his intended major, I recommend that you take a quick look at some of the schools that are on his preliminary list and see how taking either AP Calculus might benefit him.

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I have not seen anyone comment on the other students in the AB/BC classes. If most or all students in BC have taken AB the prior year, then the BC class will move very quickly through a review of the A and B part of the material and then proceed more slowly with the C part of the material. If BC is the normal senior year class then the pace and teaching will be on level with a true college course which means a very intensive, quick paced math class that expects a fair amount of self teaching (By self teaching, I mean going over a few questions in class and then practicing by doing lots and lots of problem sets on your own). I mention the other students in the class because if 7/8s of the class have taken AB before BC, then the teacher will probably not slow down that review portion and your student might very well be at a big disadvantage in terms of understanding the concepts, getting the grades and looking good when they send in their transcripts. The value to me of taking AB first, then BC second, is the thorough grounding in the concepts. My kids’ school DOES allow students to skip precalc but does NOT allow students to skip into AP Calc BC without taking AP Calc. AB, first. When you learn the basics really well, you have the confidence and the tools to move forward. Assuming this student wants to be some kind of STEM major, then take the AB class and finish high school with the BC class.

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@numbersfun‌

At my D’s enormous public high school, it’s either AB or BC by the time they reach Calculus during senior year. Though it is not prohibited, the math teachers do not recommend AB then BC. Both are year-long courses. Some kids do take AB, then BC, so they can double dip in the AP math for GPA value. There is one such student in D’s BC class this year and the teacher (who happened to know this student) made a comment during the first year that she was surprised to see him in BC after AB.

For the accelerated kids who took Calculus BC during junior year, they take AP Stats or Comp Sci instead or double up on the AP sciences.

A couple of graduates we’ve talked to have said that they felt well prepared after BC for multi-variable Calculus, which (mercifully) D won’t have to take. These kids are in Pratt at Duke.

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@attorneymother - you are making my point about the other students. If most students take BC without AB then the class will be taught to that point/level and with those expectations. If, as at my kids’ school, it is not ok to take BC without AB then a kid would be at a disadvantage to only take BC (if they allowed it on a single kid basis). I still like the 2 year AB then BC schedule for the really great grounding in calculus but, there are probably many kids who can manage the work without it. Plus, a big school has a much different set of ability levels. We are in a little town with a little school, so my observations are very influenced by those circumstances and probably need a bit of a big world reality check!

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No one at our school does AB before BC. It’s one or the other - with stronger students in the latter. Most sections of precalc do cover some calculus before the end of the year. My younger son was in a class that got through all the AB curriculum by the end of June. It definitely made BC easier for those kids. (This same teacher finishes the AP Stats curriculum in the fall and then starts teaching real stats in January which means the kids in his class end up learning some calculus.) You’d think this would be hard on kids who thought they were signing up for an easier class, but he’s such a fabulous teacher everyone does really well on the APs. He’s funny and charming to boot.

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@numbersfun‌

I wasn’t trying to dispute your point. Just illustrating that, based on my non-math background, it was more useful to rely on what my D knew about how her school deals with math than my relative inability to discern the difference between AB and BC material. You can read the College Board course descriptions but it really does depend on how your school divides the material between the two. You might spending some time emailing the math teachers and talking to your student. That’s what I did, I chatted with D and then emailed her pre-AP pre-Calculus teacher just to make sure her advice was consistent with D’s choice. Teacher said, “honors pre-Calculus kids go to BC; pre-Calculus kids tend to go to AB.”

I was actually pushing for the “easier” slower course but am glad now that D went for BC. As I’ve said, though, the vast majority of her kids at her school don’t double-dip because they move on. From a practical standpoint, kids at her school who take AB probably weren’t accelerated (for example, because they took non-honors pre-Calculus) and finish with that during senior year.

It’s obviously hard to generalize when high schools are so different.

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This is also my perception, and it really should be all you need to know if the student wants to go to a selective college and major in STEM. Why start out behind?

At my kids’ IB school (the same one Marian mentioned upthread), quite a few students didn’t take math senior year, but most of them were taking AB or BC Calc in 11th grade. The failure to take multivariable senior doesn’t seem to have affected college admissions much.

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As for BC without AB, why take a higher math course before the lower one? No one does it in college. As for skipping senior math, I was a college adviser and any student who didn’t continuously take math in high school paid a price for it in college. Many high schools require a full year of math as a senior, regardless of how far you have gone. If they have finished all the calculus (or aren’t ready for it), they can take AP Statistics.