This is where my S22 son ended up after taking the regular advanced pathway. However, with the current college application mania, its seems many students take this course junior year (or some as sophomores). They either take summer math courses or self study which my son was not interested in doing!
Despite what you see here on CC, most students have zero calculus in HS and just start in Calc I in college. Your student will be just fine!
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Yes.
My D’s Freshman year rooomate at the #8 USN Engineering school hadn’t completed Pre-Calc. (She took Summer classes to catch up after admission).
That’s out of the ordinary, but a mix of Pre-Calc and one year of Calc is probably typical.
(Please don’t self-study.)
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I agree with this.
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Yes, Calc BC is plenty - fine for MIT, so it is fine everywhere for engineering. Beyond for most. The minimum for college should be pre-calc/trig during Senior year. There are only a handful of students who should be on a trajectory that gets them to AP Calc BC in 10th grade.
The top engineering colleges want to see ECs tied into their interests and intellectual curiosity. They want to see the student will know how to collaborate and work on a team to solve problems.
They do not want to admit AP test taking robots and that is all their focus has been on.
Do not get sucked into the hysteria of the number of AP classes and the courses beyond. That is not an expectation for college admission to even the most elite highly selective colleges . Colleges want to see rigor, but not at a level where they know there are pieces missing somewhere.
There is not a college admissions person I have met who cares about self studying for AP exams (unless it is a homeschool student and the student is trying to demonstrate mastery).
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My son is currently a Freshman in the Honors Engineering program at a Top 30 university and he took AP Calc BC his senior year of high school.
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What college?
No US university expects or requires math more advanced than calculus for frosh admission.
Most engineering programs’ schedule templates start math with calculus, so their minimum expectation is a strong knowledge of precalculus (algebra, geometry, trigonometry) for frosh entrants, although completing calculus in high school may allow starting in a more advanced math course in college (based on AP or other placement scores). A few engineering programs do expect calculus in high school before frosh entry.
A student interested in engineering or other math-heavy major who completes precalculus in 11th grade or earlier should take calculus if available. However, there should be no rush to cram math in order to go beyond (single variable) calculus while in high school if the student is on a math track to take calculus in 12th grade.
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Older list of the small number of US universities that require or expect calculus (not math beyond single variable calculus) for frosh admission: What US universities explicitly state that calculus is required or expected for frosh applicants? - #20 by ucbalumnus . Of course, if that is important, check with the specific college, since there may have been changes since then.
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I sure hope so, as S2 is hoping to get into a top 20 Engineering school(not MIT, Caltech) with “just” BC.
He is also doing AP Physics and AP Chem, which will help, I imagine, depending on which ENG specialty one chooses to go into.
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It is easy to get caught up in the hype. My S23 was “recommended” AP Calc AB/BC and he is absolutely suffering after easy A in precalc honors. FWIW, he is a 3.5-ish GPA kid and I wish we had stayed away from this madness. His teacher told me that we should “consider” multivariate as a senior through community college.
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