IMO, it depends on the context of your school. When you say “some of your peers” will get to Calc III senior year is that the norm for the top students in the class or the exception? For better or worse, ad coms do assess you in the context of your school.
That said, I’d be very cautious of taking a foundational math course over the summer unless you are very very strong in math. It will go much much faster than if you take it during the school year and it won’t be worth it if you won’t be fully prepared for calculus.
At my D’s HS, AP Calc was the very highest level course offered and no one did DE math beyond that. Wasn’t even on the radar to try to get beyond AP Calc. In our new school district, Calc III has multiple sections for HS seniors because so many reach that level and there are always students that go even beyond that. As Chezcurie noted, Calc III/MVC is the new BC in our new community too.
And this doesn’t apply to OP because they will be through BC no matter what, but for those students who are not taking calculus in HS, they can be at a serious disadvantage for engineering. It was an unspoken requirement for honors engineering at my D’s school along with AP physics mechanics. Those courses were pre-reqs for the honors engineering design course. Also, the non honors students who D knows in her major that had to start in Calc I, had to double up in math both semesters sophomore year to “catch up” and stay on sequence for pre-reqs. Much more common to start in Calc II or III at her school.
My answer would be no. Broadly speaking, I wouldn’t recommend students taking summer courses on subjects that are going to be taught in HS. Do something more interesting, and perhaps more rewarding. Even in the academic space, there’s so much to learn and HS curriculum can only cover so little. Why restrict yourself to such a tiny subset of knowledge?
I’m not sure y everyone says its a terrible idea or so…I’m speaking relatively taking Pre-Calc H last year and the “fundamentals” are for one really easy to learn and secondly speaking you go over it in the beginning of Calculus either way. I’d suggest as a high school student myself I know what I’m speaking about and I’d say do it if you want to. If u don’t like math then don’t do it. I don’t know if half of these guys have even taken calculus within the past 10 years but still giving advice on it. If u love math then u should do it if not then don’t. I’d suggest not to take any of these guys advice and ask ur counselor or ur self. Also, Calculus is way different than PCH idk what these guys r even saying u need some super duper fundamental. Just remember Inverse functions, trig functions, trig identities, solving trig eqs, exp functions, logs, exp and log eqs, common graphs. That’s all the “fundamentals” these guys are stressing about and just basic algebra. Like bruh… Jumping from Algebra(Pre-Calculus is college algebra) to calculus is like jumping from arithmetic to algebra. You use arithmetic for algebra but you learn so much more than what you learned in arithmetic.
If you love math and your school offers an honors precalc course take that. Great foundation in mathematical thinking. No need to rush in my opinion. Good luck OP.
In my son’s high school pre-Calc was a relatively easy course and quite a few kids who caught the math spark a little late ended up taking it. Colleges want to know if you are taking the “most rigorous” curriculum and in some schools if you aren’t taking the most advanced math course you might not get that extra boost. My kid did science, math or computer science courses in the summer because that was what interested him. Once he got good enough he did computer programming for a summer and school year job. He ended up at Carnegie Mellon and is at Google now. He took Calc 3 as a senior. I wouldn’t say you have to take it, but it could be a boost, especially if you don’t have a better plan for the summer. I’d suggest you talk to your counselor about whether people who did the summer course have any issues with Calculus. At our school it is not an issue.
For any “normal” school…there is no need to rush to take those classes as a HS senior instead of a college sophomore.
The risk is if you are not ready you will not do well and it will count in your college GPA. Those classes will move faster because they are semester based, and not year based.
So what are your goal colleges (realistically)? If MIT or CalTech your peers may be taking those classes in HS. For others then Calculus is sufficient for any STEM type major.
Take it. Just do it if you wanna get it done now, because if you wait a few years to do it in college, it’ll be far worse. If you can do it and have the motivation to learn, just go for it. Don’t listen to all these comments trying to put you down. Best of luck.
The time to double up or take a summer course is geometry/algebra II. Take precalc over the summer if you’re a 1% kid. The problem is that you don’t know you’re in trouble until it’s too late. That’s when you get your first A-/B+/B.
I wouldn’t assume that taking PreCalc or other standard HS math classes in the summer will be rigorous. Especially for a would-be STEM major. IME, summer school math was filled with kids who struggled with the class during the regular school year and needed it to graduate.
It’s far better that you get a very strong foundation than racing to Multivariate and DiffEq, and I say that as a parent whose kid was at a public TJHSST competitor and took those classes as a junior.
He was in a Functions class (combo Alg2, PreCalc and Trig) that’s the two-semester accelerated math sequence at this STEM HS program. “Underage” students – my son was in 8th and young for grade – had to maintain a B+ to stay in the class. He had a B so wasn’t able to stay in the class. He took the class in 9th grade and aced it.
The teacher later told me it had nothing to do with his abilities, but that his brain needed a bit more time to develop the spatial and analytical skills. She was absolutely right. He wound maxing out the extensive course offerings at his HS and majoring in math.
If you are serious about computer science, you’d frankly be better served taking Linear Algebra or Discrete Math senior year instead of Calc 3/DiffEq.
Please don’t take Pre-Calculus over summer. These guys I’m assuming are just parents or people who have graduated from high-school. I took Pre-Calculus last year and please do not take Pre-Calc over summer. There is so much important trig u will F up in calc. Your already fine with taking Ap calculus in high school which is good. Only take “calc 3” if u are already two grades ahead. Me and a few of my friends were in middle school. Take your opportunities if you want to really do double accel and take a math class over middle school because most of the math is really easy and not as fundamental as Pre-Calc and Algebra. This is coming from someone who is in two grades ahead of math and in high school. Please don’t do it.
Try the AOPS intermediate algebra or the precalc class online. It’ll take about six months. If you can complete these well then you’d be fine accelerating pre-calc.
Nova has an extremely competitive pool of students for tech majors, thanks to the TJ STEM magnet school, the number one ranked school in the country. Best of luck to you.
I’m in agreement with many posters that there’s no certain “right answer”. Having gone a similar path myself (Geometry summer before 9th grade; two years of CC Calculus while in HS; Engineering major), I will say that Precalculus should work better for the summer than say Algebra II, and certainly better than basic Calculus. My reasoning is that Precalculus is a collection of largely unconnected math topics, so if you stumble in one of them it won’t mess you up for learning the others. A low score on that test perhaps, but not a cascading disaster. You can always go back later and fix the problem topic in preparation for Calculus study. As VisibleName2 points out, there are various self-study options for the elements of Precalculus.
Although typically Precalculus Honors in 12th grade was the expectation for STEM majors, calculus as a 12th grader has become an expectation unless your school doesn’t offer it. AB or BC is fine, with BC seen as stronger than AB.
You will NOT get dinged if you stay on your current math-accelerated path and taking Precalc over the summer rather than a full-year Honors Precalc class would be a mistake.
What you COULD do is take Calc BC senior year as planned and take DE Discrete Math at NOVA. Much more valuable for a CS applicant, better way to stand out, useful info for your adcoms since A in Calc BC+ A in Discrete Math provides more information as to the different math skills you need for a CS major than just one more class in the calc sequence.
In addition, you should get involved in hackathons, coding competitions, etc.