<p>I'm a Freshman in High School who's interested in becoming a Computer Engineer. I am interested to know which High School Courses will help me in becoming a Computer Engineer? I know the basic classes, like Physics and Calculus, but are there any other courses that would benefit me? If it helps, I do advanced math so I'm able to do up to AP Calculus BC by my senior year. Thanks.</p>
<p>If possible, completing Calculus BC in high school is your best bet. If that means taking Precalculus, definitely do that. If you can AP out of intro Calculus, you’ll have more time to take “computer mathematics” courses in college, where the instruction is probably going to be significantly better (AP calculus, on the other hand, is probably about the same as you’d get in a freshman calculus sequence at a typical university).</p>
<p>Programming classes, if your school offers them - like C programming (fundamental), Java.</p>
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<p>Be careful with statements like this. This varies widely both by college and by high school, but generally speaking, most AP Calculus courses are not up to par with college calculus courses as evidenced by nearly ever STEM professor/scientist complaining that students have insufficient mathematical preparation these days.</p>
<p>That said, I still agree with the overall message here in that the OP should make sure he/she takes the route that leads to calculus, even if that is at the expense of “computer mathematics”, whatever that class entails.</p>
<p>Besides the usual advice of taking all these math courses, I’d be careful with the time distribution during your high school years. You’ll be surprised how much you can forget by not taking a math course for one year, unless you have a very strong note-taking strategy. Take all courses up until AP Calculus BC. Precalculus is somewhat of a useless course, unless that’s the only option for trigonometry knowledge. </p>
<p>If you want to become a computer engineer (and I assume that by engineer, you mean hardware design/development), the most useful course is anything related to computer hardware. I took an electronics course and learned a lot about robotics - I made my own robot. Programming courses are a must-have for any title beginning with “computer”.</p>