<p>So I've been planning to take Math 104 in the spring (and just do legal studies in the fall) because a) I've heard the curve is awful in the fall but fine in the spring and b) I haven't done calculus since may 2008.</p>
<p>I mentioned that to my summer advisor, trying to get her opinion, and this is what she said:</p>
<p>"We recommend students take Math 104 as soon as possible while calculus is still
somewhat fresh from your experience in high school and to allow you to progress
to other quantitative courses in the spring if desired (such as Stat 101). If
you feel your math preparation is not sufficient to promote your success in Math
104, you could start with Math 103 in the fall (this can fulfill one of your
non-business elective requirements) and then take Math 104 in the spring."</p>
<p>I don't find this at all helpful because 1) calculus isn't still fresh...I literally have not touched it in over a year --would 3 more months make a difference? and 2) I DO think my math preparation is sufficient. I don't want to waste an elective on 103 when I could just borrow someone's textbook over winterbreak and refresh the ideas.
I'm basically just worried about the curve in the fall since everyone else will probably have just taken calculus, plus all the engineering people or whatever.</p>
<p>Do you guys think I should just stick with my current plan? Or if I could get ahold of a textbook, I could <em>maybe</em> just study during the last two weeks of august (not early because I have summer plans) and try to take the placement test to get out of 104...but I doubt I'd actually want to do that.
So...opinions? I just don't want taking 104 in the fall to screw up my gpa when I could possibly do better in the spring. (I've generally been good at math, I just didn't take any senior year because I studied abroad and then had other classes I wanted to take instead).</p>
<p>You might want to have a better calc background for BPUB 250 and OPIM 101 when you take them in the spring. It’ll also give you more flexibility in the future to get it out of the way sooner.</p>
<p>I suggest you just take math104 in the fall. (don’t bother with math103 unless you have serious problems with math). The curve is pretty much the same in the fall and the spring. On the one hand you will have a few engineers in the fall class, but the smart engineers will already be beyond that. If you take it in the spring, you’ll have all the kids who took math103 and will have all that crap fresh in their mind… so you can’t really play the “take it in spring or fall” game. Just get it over with is my opinion. Also, math 104 is a complete review of APcalc from high school plus like 2 weeks of new material, so there honestly is no need for you to even review anything over the summer.
(side note - you don’t need any calculus for stat101)</p>
<p>penn_12,
Just ot clarify when you said review did you mean AP calc AB or BC. I thought if you took AP Calc BC and got a 5 you would go right into Math 114. Thanks for you help.</p>
<p>For math at Penn, you can take whatever level course you want and if you get a C or better, you’ll get retroactive credit for the course before it. A 5 on BC means you have credit for MATH104. A placement test just tells you where you should go, but it gives you no credit. If you have to take math, do it as early as possible. If you haven’t taken Calc BC, then you definitely don’t want to try to do MATH114. You might even consider MATH103, which is equivalent to Calc AB. If you took BC and got below a 4, you might still want to take MATH103. Trust me, it’s not a waste of a course.</p>