<p>I am currently planning my senior year course load and it comes down to the question of, should I take AP Statistics or Pre-Calculus? I am not a mathematical person and my intended major will be russian and international relations. In terms of admission to UVa (and other colleges) what course should I take?</p>
<p>Personally, you need precalc before you go to colleges. Most applicants will have taken AP calc and you won’t even have taken precalc. go precalc and take AP’s in other courses.</p>
<p>I have to disagree with RAD. Though most kids will have taken precalc or some sort of trig-log-calc class, precalc isn’t an AP. Colleges are looking for strong senior schedules. However, could you take precalc and bump up one of your other regular classes to an AP?</p>
<p>I’ll be taking all AP except for a duel enrolled graduation requirement, and pre-calc (if that is what I’ll take).</p>
<p>Which one interests you more? Statistics is a field relevant to every academic major, while pre-calc is not. On the other hand, you will not be able to take pre-calc at UVA should you need calc for any reason.</p>
<p>Statistics interests me more. In my mind, Statistics would cater towards my intended major more than pre-calculus would</p>
<p>I’d suggest you go the pre-calc route. You already have enough AP classes so you don’t need to add another one to improve your resume. Although you may not be mathematically oriented, you want to keep your options open for possible changes in your major. If you were to switch to a Business degree you would likely need to take a Business Calc class (which would have pre-Calc, as a prerequsite).</p>
<p>You can always take Statistics in college, if needed.</p>
<p>I’d say go with Precalc. Not having the basic math courses may hurt your chances. If you do plan on taking a statistics course at UVA, you will need to take at least applied calculus I.</p>
<p>I called admissions and they said pre-calc and ap stat are “equally rigorous”</p>
<p>I called admissions and they said pre-calc and ap stat are “equally rigorous”</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing this. At my S’s and D’s school (IS, public), no one has been accepted without a calculus course. Some people have been accepted with Honors, but almost all have at least one AP Calc class. We were told AP Stats wasn’t as rigorous. </p>
<p>I wonder if UVA would consider AP STATs as equally rigorous as the calc course? Are there any current students out there who didn’t take Calculus before being admitted? We are planning my D’s senior schedule right now, and although she doesn’t like precalc now, she is planning to do AP Calc to try to be more competitive. Since our school offers AP Calc BC (her brother is taking it now), she knows she is already less competitive than some students.</p>
<p>
This is completely untrue. None of the introductory statistics courses use Calc. It is a 300 level statistics course (and above) that uses calc based methods. The fact that Stat without calc is an AP course that earns you credit here says everything that is wrong about that quote.
I don’t understand why you would take a class that you are miserable in just to possibly get in to UVA. Take what you are interested in and if you end up needing to do calc here, then take precalc over the summer at a community college or something.</p>
<p>Can you take both? :)</p>
<p>hazel, MATH 1210 is listed as a prerequisite for STAT 2120.</p>
<p>Wahoogrl08, I’m not a mathematical person, so I would rather take a humanities oriented course.</p>
<p>@oldUVAgrad - I would recommend AP Calc over AP Stat. The admissions representative said unless an applicant was planning on majoring in engineering/mathematics/physics, they view pre-calculus and AP stat as “equally rigorous”</p>
<p>Do you even do integrals in 121???
I just looked through all of the lecture notes at <a href=“https://webwork.itc.virginia.edu/stat212/topicinfo.html[/url]”>https://webwork.itc.virginia.edu/stat212/topicinfo.html</a> and they (1) don’t have a single derivative or integral and (2) don’t use anything more complicated than square roots, exponentials, summation notation, and probability, all of which are covered in AP Stat because I took that and I know what it covers. (3) half of the material in this class is covered on the Virginia Standards of Learning tests in Algebra 1 and 2 FYI.</p>
<p>What are you trying to argue? The course lists math 121 as a prereq. I don’t know if it’s actually necessary, but it’s still required nonetheless.</p>
<p>Requirements aren’t always set in stone.</p>
<p>I am a senior now and I am taking both. So any electives you can drop?</p>
<p>Yes, I am arguing that I do not understand why it is required when there is no calculus in the course.</p>
<p>*I called admissions and they said pre-calc and ap stat are “equally rigorous” *
Welcome to “admissions speak.” They rarely guide you and often word answers cautiously, so as not to mislead. Also, I wonder what message comes through from that answer. Since pre-calc is not as rigorous as calc, maybe they are saying AP stat isn’t that challenging.</p>
<p>I’m not a mathematical person, so I would rather take a humanities oriented course.
It’s not about you, exactly. It’s about how adcoms view your choices and performance, that you comitted to the traditional route through as much as you could, despite not being a math person.</p>
<p>*I’ll be taking all AP except for a duel enrolled graduation requirement, and pre-calc (if that is what I’ll take). * If the dual enrollment meant you couldn’t fit in pre-calc in 11th- and if the DE is impressive- you may be fine doing pre-calc in 12th. I know it’s a hard choice.</p>