<p>Does anyone know if Northwestern requires you take calculus? I am a junior right now and I am not sure if I should take pre-calc to prepare me for college, or if I can take AP statistics.</p>
<p>AP stat will look better than non ap-precalc. Also, at least in my precalculus course in 10th grade, the calculus only came in he second half of 4th quarter of the year. It was very elementary and is retaught in Calc. When Itook AP Calc in 11th, half of the kids came from trigonometry, not precalc, and did fine.</p>
<p>Well, the course is not really pre-calc, but it's Honors trig for one semster and honors math analysis for the other semester. Together, they are supposed to prepare you for calc. So would still say AP stats?</p>
<p>Pre-calc really isn't absolutely necessary for calculus. A lot of calculus just deals with manipulating simple algebraic expressions; it is nothing that can't be picked up along the way.</p>
<p>precalc is fun!
calc is even more fun!
why would u want to take stat?</p>
<p>why don't you do BOTH?</p>
<p>sorry, but if i had to choose one over the other, idk.. if ur good @ math, take stat. cuz then you .. probably.. won't need the precalc.</p>
<p>However, manipulating those expressions gets extremely annoying after a while! :) </p>
<p>Adding onto what uc_benz said, many of the main ideas in calculus are built off of previous material covered in the class so they won't throw something at you if some of the people in the class haven't seen it before that point. If they do, they'll at least review the concept with you before they expect you to be able to do it perfectly yourself. You should be all right, but be prepared to ask a higher number of questions than usual. Precalc. is usually used as a stepping stone to introduce you to a few major ideas needed in calculus and to make the transfer into it a little easier on you.</p>
<p>yeah, and if they have an entire year for it something must be important, right?</p>
<p>northwestern does not itself require calculus (unless you're in the engineering school, of course). you do have to take two "formal studies" courses, but they include options in finite math, stats, computer science, and linguistics. so if you think you would enjoy statistics more than calculus, i see no reason not to take ap stats and then either continue statistics at northwestern or find other math-related classes to take.</p>
<p>I never took Pre Calc, and I'm now taking AP Calculus and loving it. Pre Calc is not necessary, although I suppose it could help a little bit.
I think you're best off taking whichever you would enjoy the most.</p>