<p>I was planning on going to Berkeley this summer to do a pre-collegiate course as I have received positive feedback from others on it. Although little information has been released about 2009 summer courses, there are a few things that I wanted to ask.</p>
<p>First of all - have any of you taken the pre-collegiate course in berkeley, and do you have any feedback or suggestions? Was it helpful in terms of high school academics? My main goal in this course is to challenge myself and improve my mathematical abilities which will ultimately help me in my IB Math HL course (I realize that this course won't actually help with college admissions, so we can put that aside). Are the courses suitable for an IB math HL student?</p>
<p>I would plan on taking a math course, and I have come across a page with a list of the courses, but I am not sure which one would be suitable for me (the list is somewhat overwhelming, and the syllabi are still unavailable).</p>
<p>I would be grateful if a current Berkeley student (who knows the IB math HL syllabus) to direct me towards the most suitable course for me to take. Here's the IB math HL syllabus, for you to compare it against:</p>
<p>It may be important to know that the option topic that our school has chosen is series and differential equations (this is the topic in which we will go into greater detail in our IB course).</p>
<p>Couple questions
-Are you currently a junior or senior in high school?
-Was/is your first year of IB Math HL, essentially a Calculus AB
-Is/will your second year of IB Math HL based on the calculus option (meaning you will learn all of Calculus).</p>
<p>I did Math HL at my high school, but our first year was AP Calculus AB and our second year was IB Math HL, during which we covered all of AP Calculus BC and took the BC AP test.</p>
<p>If your program is like mine, and you are NOT premed I would recommend you either take Math 1B, which will be mostly review of Calc BC, or Math 53 which is multivariable calculus.</p>
<p>If you are a junior in high school currently, I would not recommend that you waste your time taking a math class here.</p>
<p>I’m currently a Junior, which is why I am still sceptical about taking a class there. I’m an international student who will be visiting the US over the summer (when I will be a rising senior) and thought that a course there might be an opportunity for me to improve my maths for IB and challenge myself academically.</p>
<p>Our school doesn’t offer AP, so I’m not sure what is covered in AB and BC. The way it works in my school is that we simply cover the entire maths HL course over two years (so I’m in math HL class for both years) - most of it in our Junior year, and then some of the more challenging stuff, such as our option (Series and differential equations) in senior year. But most of our senior year is cut short for exam study leave, and much of it is spent going over junior year material. So far we’ve covered things like logarithms and exponents, differentiation, trigonometry and are looking at integration now. We haven’t looked at multivariable calculus.</p>
<p>I would say that it is pointless for you to take summer school here. Not worst the cost, given your international status and high school status.</p>