Right now I’m in the ninth grade and I’m Honors Geometry. I was talking with my counselor and was wondering should I skip Pre-Calc and just jump right into Calculus. I’ve looked at the pre-calc book my school uses and it’s honestly just a repeat of stuff I’ve already mastered with a few things that I haven’t learned, but are simple enough that I could learn them while taking calculus. So to put it simply, would it be a good idea to skip pre-calculus and jump to calculus?
Did you take algebra 2 and trig?
No, it’s not a good idea. Pre-calculus may seem basic, but you need to get that drilled into your head before stepping a foot into calculus. You need to be able to do that all in your sleep, because when you go to college and you have to take calc, they will assume you have a solid, forward and backward knowledge of pre-calc.
@cpresson1 I’m taking Algebra 2 and trig right now, I have an 98 in it in case you wanted to know.
@2001JET So you are in Alg2, trig, and geometry all at the same time? Why?
@LKnomad sorry, I meant I already took Algebra and trig and got a 98 in, it’s one course not two separate classes.
If you honestly think you can take on calculus, go ahead. But be warned, however, that skipping pre-calc may not be a good idea, since it forms the basis of everything you’ll do in calculus.
If you do skip, make sure you spend some time outside of class familiarizing yourself with the concepts, such as trigonometric identities.
Assuming you take AP Calculus BC in 10th grade, what will you take in 11th-12th grades? Do you have a nearby community college or dual enrollment program where you could take Multivariable Calculus, Linear Algebra, Differential Equations, etc.?
@goldenbear2020 Not to be rude, you assumed incorrectly. I would take calculus 10th grade year, then AP Calculus BC 11th grade, and to finish off I could take Differential calculus or Statistics and probability.
@2001JET Then, no doubt you should take precalc then BC Calc. The normal calculus class will assume the foundations of precalculus and it’ll be a real pain to learn all that as you’re going. They won’t cater to you so you’ll be expected to learn the precalculus topics on your own time, which, although not impossible, is hard for many. If you’re planning on doing 2 years of a calculus sequence, why not just take the traditional sequence? It’s traditional because it’s got at least some merits to it. If it didn’t have its reasoning everybody would take calculus then BC.
Bad Idea. when I was a freshman I had honors GeometryThen Sophmore year I took Algebra 2 and Pre-Cal honors. In pre-cal it takes you above and beyond what you think you know, I recommend taking pre-cal then you have the choice to jump to either Cal BC or Calc AB
I recommend AB which is what I’m in. They move relatively slow compared to BC however, it will get you ready for Calculus BC(Calculus 2)
If you think you’re ready then answer this simple question
In a triangle
side a = 12
side b = 21
Angle c = 94
Find side c
Angle A
Angle B
Its a basic law of cosines question for pre-cal and trig
What are you planning to do down the road?
If it’s something that doesn’t involve math, then sure, take as many math courses as you can as quickly as you can, to get them out of the way and open up your future schedule for the things you’ll want to learn.
But if you have any intentions of every using the math, then I suggest, strongly, that you actually take the courses instead of testing through them.
Teaching to the test is generally understood to be very poor teaching. All it teaches you is what’s on the test. It doesn’t teach you the nuances of the material.
And, with all due respect to @perryxperry , there’s a lot more to Precalc than solving a triangle. If that were all there was to the course I teach, I would be giving a one question final exam and spending 10 months teaching the Law of Sines and the Law of Cosines.
@bjkmom Yeah, I actually want to major in Physics and hopefully eventually get my PhD. Thanks for the help.
@2001JET I think it’s possibly OK for you to skip Precalc, but you need to have a plan for what to do for the rest of HS. If your HS offers classes beyond Calc BC, that makes the planning easier.
My son told me he wanted to skip 10th grade precalc because his Math Circle buddies (and even some smart but not so mathy kids at school) said it was slow and repetitive. His 9th grade class was Alg II/Trig, which included the trig identities. The school’s way of skipping precalc is just to take the local community college’s math placement test, and place into Calc 1. I told him that he needed to learn more, because the calc placement test was probably pretty basic. He did much/most of the Art of Problem Solving book on Precalculus, which is pretty tough. It turned out that he knew some parts of most of the topics because he’d used vectors in AP Physics, matrices and polar coordinates for some of his own programming projects, and intro to sequences and series for some fun topics at his Math Circle. I don’t actually know if his school’s precalc class covered all of those topics; perhaps not. But, they are all useful math topics, and you should learn them because you will need them later. I also told him that he had to score well on the Math Level II SAT Subject test if he wanted to skip Precalc (he got an 800).
He took Calc BC sophomore year after Alg II/Trig. If you are a mathy kid, taking 2 years to spread out Calc AB and Calc BC will seem really slow to you. Calc BC was the first math class ever where he felt like he was at the right level of challenge. Our school doesn’t offer anything after Calc BC (unless you count AP Stats as being “after”, which you probably shouldn’t). He took Discrete Math at the community college last semester and is taking an online community college class in Multivariable Calc this semester. We’ll figure out next year when the schedules come out, but probably Linear Algebra and then either DiffEq or some elective he can take after Linear Algebra. Really, I didn’t want him to be this far ahead in math, because it’s a lot of work to research where/when you can take community college classes. His community college previously had evening multivariable/linear/diffEq classes, but they stopped that just when he needed them.
He also wants to major in physics or physics with CS and eventually get a PhD.
@2001JET I suggest looking at the following pre-test:
http://data.artofproblemsolving.com/course-docs/diagnostics/calculus-pretest.pdf
If you can comfortably solve all of the problems, you might be ready for calculus.
I do know people that skipped pre-calculus, got 5’s on AB/BC and went on to successful careers, so skipping pre-calculus might not be a bad idea if you have the background. On the other hand, I have tutored a couple of calculus students who did not have the requisite algebra background, and that was a pain, both for me and for them. Hopefully you aren’t of this type.
I skipped pre-calculus and I’m in AP calculus ab and it’s fine. It took a lot of work to teach myself pre-calc, but it’s doable