My daughter is a rising HS senior and looking to take AP Calculus or the college equivalent as a summer online course this year. She has 5 AP classes on her fall schedule and she wants to free up space in her schedule to do studio art.
I have searched online high schools and community colleges here in WA and can’t find any options. Online high schools only seem to offer AP level classes during the school year to coordinate with the May AP test schedule. My daughter doesn’t care about the test, she just wants the class. None of our local community colleges offer it during summer either. It shows up on some of the summer schedules of our local 4-year publics but as traditional on-campus lecture classes which I assume will not happen this summer.
I’m just curious if any of you have found a place to do online calculus or other AP type classes during summers? Or is this a fools errand?
Coastline College, a community college in California, offers summer online calculus 1 courses. However, there is out-of-state tuition for non-California residents.
Thanks. I have yet to check the Seattle-area community colleges. They weren’t in the same consortium as our local community college here in Vancouver so I need to go to their web sites directly one at a time.
I’m guessing the community college route is probably the way to go. I was just surprised that such a mainstream prerequisite class like Calculus I would be so hard to find.
Your mention of Coastline made me think of Portland Community College across the river in Oregon. According to their web site, they have reciprocal in-state tuition with all the states that border Oregon (WA, CA, ID and NV) so that might be the most viable option. It’s a huge institution with 8 separate campuses so surely they have at least one campus offering Calculus 1. But their summer course schedule doesn’t go live until May 8 so gotta wait to see. The advantage is that the nearest campus is 15 minutes away so we could do in-person paperwork if necessary.
Thanks. I had never heard of this school. I assume it is reputable? Looks interesting. Courses running into the fall is going to be a problem though I think. She’ll have a full plate of other AP classes in the fall plus marching band and she teaches music to little kids. So she pretty much wants to limit outside online courses to actual summer. And I don’t blame her. Kind of defeats the purpose of doing it over summer.
Just going to put it out there that I don’t love the idea of students taking math courses over the summer. It’s more rushed and math builds on itself.
Also, will your HS even count the online course? Many schools have strict guidelines as to what can be taken for credit. I know my D’s HS required 4 years of math, taken at school, to graduate.
Personally I’d consider doing art over the summer, not math.
Don’t forget about the change in speed. If you are converting a normal full year AP Calc AB to a summer class, you have increased the speed 3-4x. By the time you realize that you are having difficulty, the class is over. Also, is there likely more math in her future? If yes, starting your Calc base at a CC, with a CC instructor, with CC students, in summer, and with a gap to your next math class is likely a bad idea.
Yes they will accept the credit and she doesn’t need it to graduate anyway as she already has the required 4 years of math. She did geometry online summer of her freshman year to advance a year because when we moved to this district in 8th grade she got tracked into the wrong math class and I didn’t notice until was too late. Essentially this is just an elective for her, she doesn’t need to take any math next year.
I would be all in favor of the art idea, except that summer sessions this year look very likely to be online due to coronavirus so that makes taking studio art problematic. Calculus would seem to lend itself much easier to online instruction through zoom lectures and such.
She is interested in studying some type of life scences, most likely a biomedical field like genetics and molecular biology. So that would likely put her in the position of needing maybe Calculus I and Statistics in college but not more than that (I think). She isn’t looking to study engineering, physics, or another highly quantitative field.
She has done other online summer courses. Geometry her freshman year, and Spanish her sophomore year. She is they type who gets up each morning in the summer and grinds away on her school work until it is done before even looking at her phone. So she can probably do it. She has more self-discipline than I do.
Also, this is something she wants to do with her best friend. They both want to take the same online summer course. Especially if we are going to spend most of the summer largely locked away. So she will have a 24/7 study partner who is equally bright.
Art of Problem Solving is very reputable in online math teaching. They have been so successful that they have started opening brick and mortar schools. S23 has taken 2 of their courses.
Note that college semester or quarter systems can matter in terms of class pacing. Normal college pace would be like taking AP calculus BC in one academic year immediately after completing precalculus (AP calculus AB is slower paced).
At a semester system college (two 15-week semesters plus an 8-week summer session), the calculus 1 summer course will go at twice the pace that it would during the fall or spring (it will meet twice as many hours per week as in a fall or spring semester as well).
At a quarter system college (three 10-week quarters plus a 10-week summer session), the calculus 1 summer course will go at normal pace, since the summer session is like a normal quarter (it will meet the same number of hours per week as in the regular academic year).
Note that calculus 1 at a quarter system college typically covers two thirds the material as calculus 1 at a semester system college.
Johns Hopkins CTY has online AP Calc that is self paced and you can start whenever you like. You need to qualify but you can do it using ACT or SAT scores.
Thanks guys. We found the solution. Going to enroll her at WSU-Vancouver, the branch campus of WSU that is in our town. They have Calculus online this summer, even though the local community college did not. Not AP Calculus, regular college Calculus 1.
Enrolling her as a non-degree student was pretty trivial.
Great solution. She gets a regular college calculus class and offered locally. Having a study partner is also great. Gives her something to do this summer and she has done math in the summer before. Plus it should be no problem later to have the course credits being accepted if desired.
Did you confirm with the high school they will accept the class? Many high schools will not give credit for classes that are not preapproved or offered at places they don’t have agreements with. I’m thinking OP knows this and is set but not everyone may know that.