<p>The basic question is: how will a medical school view me starting my college career in math 5a (pre-calc) rather than math 10a (calc)? I have also heard of colleges that do not offer credit (towards the 128 for graduating) for taking pre-calc (since it is really a HS course), is this true?</p>
<p>Why don’t you finish up pre-calc during summer school, so you can start on equal footing with your classmates.</p>
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<p>Depends on the college. A lot of publics offer pre-calc and provide graduation credit for it.</p>
<p>You do not need pre-calc. Just take one semester of college calc and one semester of college stats (stats are much more useful than calc, calc is not used in any science classes, unless you take calc-based physics, which is not required, non-calc physics is OK)</p>
<p>^^^^ What??? PRE-calc is a prereq for calc. You do need PRE-calc to do well on calc.</p>
<p>Pre-calc is useless. Calc is easy enough to do well, and then you do not need it for any other classes anyway, it is just a reguirement for Med. School, just like English.</p>
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<p>Perhaps at your HS (or for an engineer), but for mere non-math geeks, precalc can be highly recommended. </p>
<p>btw: Personally, I would not make such strong, sweeping statements based on just personal experiences.</p>
<p>Everybody’ advice here is based on personal experience, what else? Pre-calc is definitely usless for engineers who need much more intense calc class than pre-med. Engineers are the ones who actually have classes based very heavily on calc. But if pre-med wants to waste time on pre-calc, it is his decision. We cannot decide for him. We were asked for advice. Advice would be different from person to person because people have different experiences. Mine is based on my personal engineering background and my D’s experience as pre-med.</p>
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<p>Some of us have professional experience, as well. :)</p>
<p>Also (in California), precalc includes trig, which will be needed for algebra-based physics. Obviously, some/many folks could teach it to themselves, but I suppose that they could do the same with Calc and Stats and xx premed requirement…given enough time and dedication.</p>
<p>IMO med schools won’t care where you start your math sequence. In this instance, they also won’t care if you took it at summer school, at community college, or online. Just don’t go into calc at your 4 year school under-prepared.</p>
<p>Edit: Don’t be concerned about the college credit for the pre-calc course. The goal is the A in Calc (and of course the joy of learning ;)), not the credit hours.</p>
<p>Then just take trig. which is needed minimally at the very simple few formulas level. But again, it is not up to us to decide, we ca only give advice.</p>