<p>This is the highest level my daughter will take before college. She is - for some reason - very interested in MechEng. Will she be swamped first year?</p>
<p>No, should be fine. Even if she's had calculus, it's often recommended to retake it in college. If she has the determination to get through the required courses and the good sense to ask for help when she gets stuck, she'll do just fine.</p>
<p>Also,
[quote]
She is - for some reason - very interested in MechEng.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>What on earth does <em>that</em> mean? ;)</p>
<p>@woody, you might consider enrolling your daughter in a summer quarter calculus class. There are also lots of web sites where one can teach oneself the basics of calculus and take practice exams.</p>
<p>No she'll be fine. She could try and test out of Calc 1 if she wanted or just take the class. Most people I know didn't skip Calc 1 in college.</p>
<p>No, actually, pre-calc is exactly what you should take before college on average. It's the pre-requisite for Calc 1, which you take 1st semester, so your daughter is right on track!</p>
<p>My D is on same track and interested in EE. Only problem she's going to run into is needing calc in AP Physics from what I understand. She's the only one in the AP class not in Calc. The teacher, who also teaches Calc, says she'll make sure D learns enough to keep up. I think even last year in Honors Physics it hurt her to be a year behind everyone else. Once she hits college though, things should even out.</p>
<p>I only took algebra 1 and 2 with a little geometry/trig in between (nothing serious...just sin/cos/tan and the unit circle) in junior year of HS then I stopped. I'm doing M E and have gotten A's in all my college math classes including Calc 1 and 2 for engineers, and linear algebra. Now I'm taking Calc 3 which isn't too bad, but I like Calc 2 more. Seriously, you don't need to take Calc/pre-calc in high school to do well in college math classes. Just work hard, do lots of practice problems, and listen in class.</p>
<p>Calc is normally a corequisite for physics so it's generally not a requirement but having had calc before taking physics usually makes taking physics easier.</p>
<p>I took precalculus in my Junior year of highschool, didn't take math my senior year, starting taking math again my second semester of college and now I'm transferring to UCSD as a mechanical engineer and I've almost finished up all of my math requirements already. I definately think she'll be fine in college as long as she keeps a passion for what she wants to do. Like killer said, precalc, calc in highschool is a waste anyways (unless your a humanities major, then you didnt really need it anyways). Its more important to take it in college, you learn way more.</p>