<p>My son (a senior who has applied to UVA) took the AP Calc AB test last year and received a five. He is doing fine in BC, but does not want to take the AP test. One of the reasons he doesn't want to take the test is that he doesn't feel the instruction has been as good this year. He is worried that his AB subscore might not be a 5, given that they haven't spent much time on AB curriculum, and he wonders if a less than 5 would reflect badly on him and/or cancel his AB test from last year. He also really wants to focus on studying for his other AP tests.</p>
<p>My questions: Does anyone know how not taking the AP Calc BC will look to admissions (assuming that he is accepted)? If he changes his mind and takes the test and doesn't get a 5 on the AB subscore, how will that be viewed and will it affect the math credit that he could potentially receive for the 5 that he already has? Have any of you been accepted to UVA (recently) without having taken an AP exam that you took the class for?</p>
<p>He will already have his admissions decision by the time he would take the AP test. They will not renege his acceptance because he did not take an AP exam. Admissions cares about AP as it correlates to course rigor, but do not get the AP scores from the testing center unless a student sends them junior year. Students, however, do not have to send scores to admissions at all. Once a student is accepted at a college/university and decide to attend it is at this time when they take the AP’s in May of their senior year they put down which school all of their scores should be sent. Here is the link to match up scores with UVa credit. </p>
<p>My son, a current first-year, took AP Physics in his senior year, but decided not to take the exam. There was no problem whatsoever–he just didn’t get advanced placement for physics, which he didn’t want anyway (wanted to take a calculus-based intro course at UVA). </p>
<p>The only potential downside to not taking the BC exam is that, I gather, the 2nd semester calculus course at UVA–both in the College (MATH) and in the Engineering School (APMA)–are actually much harder than calculus BC although they claim to cover the same material. APMA calculus in particular is apparently a “weed-out” class for the Engineering School. So some people on this board (hazelorb, I believe, and perhaps others) recommend that those who want to go on in math take the AP credit from the BC exam and move on to multivariable calculus. Once again, YMMV. My son, who took calculus AB in his junior year of hs and got a 5 on the exam, took the second-semester APMA calculus class at UVA during his senior year in high school, because he wanted to take a computer science course at UVA which had a time conflict with AP BC calculus at his high school. He found the APMA class dramatically more challenging than his high school math classes, and didn’t get a fabulous grade (B-). But he thought that he learned a ton, and that the class was very well taught. His positive experience in that class was one of the factors that sold him on UVA.</p>
<p>I highly recommend that he takes the BC Calculus test. This is for a couple of reasons:</p>
<p>a. He’s worried about his AB subscore, but he really shouldn’t be. As long as he has a basic grasp of limits, derivatives, and elementary integrals, he’ll do fine. I have no doubt that he can get a 5 on the subscore if he got a 5 on the exam.</p>
<p>b. The BC test is graded very leniently. You only need to get half the questions correct for a 5, and you only need about 25% correct for a 3. Obviously it’s a pretty rigorous exam, but if he’s at all confident in his mathematical aptitude he should do fine</p>
<p>c. As other have said, Calc II tends to be a weeder course, designed to give a lot of homework and be difficult in general. It would suck to struggle through it and realize that you could have already received credit for it.</p>
<p>He should definitely go for it. He might end up doing better than he thinks.</p>
<p>To add one thing…if he already made a 5 on the AB test, he will get college credit for that equivalent class regardless of the AB subscore he receives on the BC test. (i.e. It is my understanding the subscore cannot cancel out earned credit already established on the AB exam.) I would agree with what’s been said – he has nothing to lose from taking the BC test (except perhaps National AP Scholar distinction) and should take it.</p>