<p>What is the usual pre-req?</p>
<p>What type of student can handle it?</p>
<p>If my D took it in 11th grade, what would she take in 12th? BC is the highest offered at this HS.</p>
<p>Is it practical for a student who's college path may not be math-heavy? (Possible pre-heatlh, but 10th grade is too early to know for sure.) </p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>Usual pre-req is Pre-Calc/Trig. But, some high schools teach Calculus over two years, i.e., Year 1 = Calc AB, and Year 2 = Calc BC. (AB is approximately 65% of BC.)</p>
<p>The vast majority if kids do not take Calc in HS. But those attending highly selective colleges generally do – approx. 25% of our seniors take Calc BC. For mathy-kids, Calc in Junior year is not uncommon, with the next level taken at a local college senior year. </p>
<p>Calc is required by a few med schools, but not all.</p>
<p>Typical classes taken after AP Calc BC include Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calc and Differential Equations. Check on options to dual enroll at a CC. There are also on line options as well (JHU CTY, Stanford EPGY) which are pricey but much more flexible.</p>
<p>DS, if you PM me I’ll tell you our story …</p>
<p>Another option is Discrete Mathematics but it’s not widely offered. BTW, the community colleges in my area and the neighboring state do not offer Linear Algebra, Multivariable Calculus or Differential Equations. One has Multivariable Calculus in their catalog but they’ve never offered it due to lack of interest. My guess is that most CC students take it in their state university when they transfer in.</p>
<p>The usual pre-req is Pre-Calc. If your D’s school offers AP Calc BC, then I would expect them to offer Pre-Calc．</p>
<p>If a student can handle Pre-Calc, then he/she should be able to continue on. Ask your D to talk with students who took AP Calc BC, get their views, especially on the teacher’s teaching technique. Some teachers would make an easy class hard because they did not know how to represent the material. </p>
<p>If your D can take it in her junior year and she is confident that she can handle the class, it’s perfectly okay. It might actually do her good as AP Calc BC would show up in the transcript by the time she does her college application. It is not her fault that she does no math in grade 12, it is only that the school has no math classes for her. (If she turns to become interested in math/science, she can take a more advance Calc/Math class in your local community college during grade 12.) </p>
<p>Generally speaking, if a student intends to major in the math/science area, he/she should take the APCalc BC (if it is offered). However, most (elite) college admission officers would tell a student to go for the most challenging curriculum the high school offers and do his/her best. So, … you (or your D) decide(s).</p>
<p>Good luck.</p>
<p>The students who finished AP Cal by junior year, did a “dual enrollment” for higher math classes at our local university for senior year. Some took Cal II and some took Cal III (depending on how strong they were in math).</p>
<p>Thought I would share our cc experience, if you’re thinking of going that route. At our (high-performing, suburban) school there are about a dozen kids who take Calc BC as juniors. Most of those kids take AP Stats senior year. As far as I know, my daughter and her friend are the only ones who decided to take MV Calc at the local cc. The class meets twice a week in the evening (five hours total per week). Homework is about ten hours a week. Daughter says it doesn’t seem any different than a high school class. She had to learn to use Mathematica software and a graphing program. She enjoys it but now says her AP Physics class is frustrating because she’s already covered so much of the material. One caveat is that the high school and cc calendars do not line up, so it’s been hard to schedule college visits!</p>
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<p>Hard to say. A lot of the suggestions you are getting here for senior year are for classes that are even more advanced than BC Calc and it isn’t clear that a non-math-heavy student needs to do those before college (or even in college). </p>
<p>If she does do BC in junior year and if AP Stat is an option in her school then I would recommend that route. A good foundation in statistics will help her in pre-health and in many other disciplines. (ETA: just noticed IloveLA’s post).</p>
<p>It’s very practical for a student whose college path may not be math-heavy. With a decent score on the Calculus AP, she may never have to take math again, even if her college generally requires it. That’s a tremendous boon if you don’t like math.</p>
<p>I wonder about taking AP Stats after AP Calculus BC. I am pretty sure that AP Stats is not calculus-based. While I agree that a good foundation in statistics is a great thing to have in many disciplines, I think a foundation in calculus-based statistics would be a great deal more valuable than AP Stats. The only reason to take AP Stats after Calculus would be wanting to take another year of math and having nothing else available.</p>
<p>JHS: I think OP’s question is, is it practical to take it in junior year, not whether to take it at all. OP also stated that there was nothing else available in school beyond BC Calc. </p>
<p>So the three options for senior year would be to: 1) not do a fourth year of math, 2) take a more advanced math class in a local college, or 3) take AP Stat or some other class that the school offers, that is less challenging than BC calc.</p>
<p>The other option, I supppose, would be to go slower on the math track in junior year and leave BC Calc for senior year.</p>
<p>Option 2) may look great in theory but for a ‘non-mathy’ kid it may not make too much sense to go through the logistical hurdles of taking college classes in senior year.</p>
<p>At our HS, students who are advanced at math take Pre-Calc Honors junior year then go on to Calc BC senior year. The first half of senior year is Calc AB, the second half of the year is Calc BC. Bear in mind that many universities have incoming freshman take a math/calc placement/readiness test. If your D takes calc junior year of HS, will she remember what she learned a year-and-a-half later when she has to take the university math placement test? She sure doesn’t want to have to repeat calc just because she forgot what she learned!</p>
<p>Also, and this is just my take on things, many universities want students to have at least 4 years of math. My kids have/will have 5 years of math (including calc BC) upon HS graduation. (They both took HS math in 8th grade thus, the fifth year.) Several of my kids’ friends have/will have taken calc BC by end of sophomore or junior year. (Yeah, they are scary smart in math.) They then enroll(ed) at our local college to get the advanced math they need(ed)/want(ed). You should check with your school GC and get his/her input on this. </p>
<p>IMHO it seems like your D is very smart. Since she doesn’t know for sure what she wants to study, perhaps she should keep pushing the math. Worst case scenario is that she has all her college math done by HS graduation and never has to take another math course again. This was the rationale for both my kids when they enrolled in AP Eng 11th and 12th grade. It worked great for my DS who is THRILLED he doesn’t have to take Eng in college. DD is still in HS, but is hoping for the same outcome as her brother. I suspect it will be.</p>
<p>Thanks for the replies, everyone. (And for the PM, YDS.)</p>
<p>Here’s the thing: Our school system just added a new course to the math sequence and they’re requiring AP Calc AB before BC. Accordingly, D’s math path is shaping up as follows…</p>
<p>H Alg I (7th)
H Geom (8th)
H Alg II (9th)
H Alg II & Data Analysis (now, 10th grade, this is the new layer and it’s also nicknamed Alg III, using a precalc textbook!)
H Trig & PreCalc
AP Calc AB
AP Calc BC</p>
<p>Does that look redundant to you? I just don’t see how they expect kids to reach BC on this path. We have blocked schedules, so I guess she could squeeze it all in if she wants to double-up next year. Or maybe pre-req waivers are available and nobody’s told us yet. </p>
<p>I hear y’all say that Calc is uncommon outside CC world. But, like a musician or someone with a knack for FL, D takes math for fun and passion. She gets a real kick out of it so I’d like to help her remain engaged…even if she really isn’t drawn to it for college or career. </p>
<p>Oh, well. Thanks for listening and for the info. :)</p>
<p>That is weird - it seems unnecessarily protracted. At our school the usual honors sequence is this:
Alg 1 (8th)
H Geometry (9th)
H Alg 2 (10th)
H Trig/Precalcu (11th) - my older son’s class started on Calculus in April, my younger son’s class started on it in January and actually took the AB Calc exam in June (too late to count though!)
AP Calc BC (12th) though a fair number chicken out and just do AB Calc.</p>
<p>There’s generally a half dozen or so kids who either start Alg 1 in 7th or take Precalc in the summer so that they have run a Multvariable Calc class for seniors for the last few years. Prior to that they found courses to take at the local colleges or took AP Stats.</p>
<p>Looks like there has to be some sort of pre-req waivers for a student to actually get to calc BC by senior year. Definitely check with your GC about this. IF I have the right take on this - are you asking if your D should skip calc AB and go straight to BC? My answer would be “no”. Have her do the AB,then the BC. As far as the other stuff - how much pre-calc does a student need before they go on to calc? :)</p>
<p>That sounds unnecessarily protracted. I know kids who double up on Geometry and AlgII in eighth or ninth grade in order to advance further in math, but it sounds too late for your dd, right?</p>
<p>Do you have a sense of why this was done? And whether you can be grandfathered out of the requirement?</p>
<p>I would ask them why they added the new class. Are they trying to slow down the sequence because kids were having trouble? If your daughter does math for fun, I would encourage her to continue at the most challenging level.
There are some parents on this board who have kids doing math competitions-- they will have more advice, and sometimes a different approach. They may refer you to this article: [The</a> Calculus Trap](<a href=“http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_A_Calculus.php]The”>http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Resources/AoPS_R_A_Calculus.php)</p>
<p>She could always take a Stats. class at a CC in 12th grade.
Stats is a required class for many health related majors.<br>
S1 took Calc. AB as a junior but did not want to do BC so took AP Stats as a senior.
Stats turned out to be a required class for his college major so he was glad he already had credit for it.</p>
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Many kids here do that, so it is something I’m wondering. Thanks.</p>
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It’s new this year. Rumor mill reports that it’s somehow related to Alg II replacing Alg I as the a Maryland graduation requirement. Although I fail to see the connection. It’s a mystery. Many parents, like me, are quite dismayed. </p>
<p>I’d love to get her grandfathered out, or tested out of something. If that’s not possible, I fear this girl with a 99 lifetime average may grow bored and give it up. Or worse, get cocky and slack off, resulting uncharacteristically low grades.</p>
<p>Call me cynical, but I was at a conference where I heard science teachers in a Western state decrying what was happening to standards there. Seems that the Lege said kids must have four years of math to graduate. Rather than truly increasing rigor, they stretched Algebra out over three years for kids who couldn’t pass. So “four years” of math looked like Alg IA, Alg IB, Alg IC and Geometry. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Could that be what’s happening?</p>