I will have taken Calculus BC in my junior year and my high school does not offer any other math classes for me to take. The will pay for me to take an online class in Multivariable Calculus. Does anyone have thoughts between Stanford, Hopkins or University of Illinois? Or another online class? I am worried about taking such a difficult class in an online environment. Any success stories?
It would be a better choice to take it through a community college.
I have went through part of the online MIT OCW multivariable calculus course, to use as extra practice for my real life calculus course back then. I like the OCW and other courses I’ve taken more so than most of the real life lecture-based courses I’ve had - it really helps to be able to replay/stop videos in order to take notes, and the flexibility.
I don’t think you should be intimidated by math courses from major universities, it’s possible you may even do better because they may be more conceptual or proof based (if that suits you more). I think the question is, are you planning to take a course for credit and then transfer it when you attend university? If so I would look into whether or not Stanford, etc. would accept the community college course before you decide to go that route - if they don’t accepted it would take it from one of the universities. If it’s just for self learning I would use free/cheaper options like OCW or Edx, Coursera, etc.
It’s great that the school will pay for it. My daughter, homeschooled through high school, did all of her high school math online through AoPS and had a great experience throughout, felt no disadvantage for being online. I don’t have an opinion on Stanford vs Hopkins vs UIUC but think you’d be better off with any one of those than an in-person class at CC, because the rigor will be greater in those online classes; CC is likely to be more nuts-and-bolts. Is there a way to look at sample lessons from the online options?
I had to do the same thing when I was in high school because I exhausted all of my high school’s math classes too.
I would say, go for the online course instead of the in-person. This is because the online format will let you move at your own pace…I think that will be important because the other students in that class will have more background information than you - they will already know how to apply the principles in different settings because of the other classes that they will be taking. You won’t have that advantage, so if you did actually sit in class with them, often times you will feel lost while they breeze through topics.
Stanford, Hopkins, and UofI are great choices, but I would look into which one will give you college credit for the school that you are interested in going to. If all three of them do so, then I would say pick between Stanford or UofI, because they emphasis on theory AND practical applications, while Hopkins is more theoretical.
Also, I would consider which class lets you interact with the professor (if you want to). So, if you have other online class options, I would say look into those as well - Stanford and UofI have pretty big class sizes, so you will not be interacting with the professor directly…probably the TAs or someone else…
Interacting with the professors is great because they will be able to put in a good word for you when you apply, and maybe even write a letter of recommendation for you…I had one of my professors do that, and it helped a lot. When you are searching for that though, also search what your professor is researching - if you are into theoretical stuff, try to get into a course taught by a theoretical mathematician, etc.
I hope that helps! Let me know if you have any more questions.