Hi, I would appreciate your opinion regarding DD’s senior math course selection.
Her current junior courses:
AP Calculus AB
AP Chemistry
AP/College Physics I
AP English Lang and Comp
AP US History
Spanish III
One hour of required class by her program
She is a 4.0 student but when she started her junior year with AP Cal BC, she was getting low B/high C’s in her tests. She was concerned that she might ended up a B or a C in Cal BC, she decided to switch to Cal AB early in the year. The switch turned out to be good as she ended with an A in Cal AB this past semester (as well as the rest of her classes).
For her senior year, she is thinking about taking:
AP Calculus BC - ???
AP Statistics
AP Biology
AP English
AP Gov/Quest
Spanish IV
One hour of required class by her program
Had she taken Cal BC in junior, then she would be taking Linear Algebra/multivariable calculus her senior year. Since she took Cal AB instead, should she take Cal BC as a senior? Is taking Cal AB and then BC a normal progression for high school students?
If she stops at Cal AB, that would seem that she stops at two level down from the highest level math course her school offers. Right?
(Her school Cal AB is not a prerequisite of Cal BC. The Cal BC covers both AB and BC)
How would selective colleges view her this?
Are you concerned about learning math or how colleges view this?
What does her AB Calculus teacher recommend?
Ideally, I would say do linear algebra in the fall and the second half of BC calculus in the spring perhaps getting tutored on the one or two topics she hadn’t seen yet that she would have missed in the fall (L’hopital’s rule).
Both. I would like her to learn math and I would like her course selection to be viewed favorably by the selective colleges.
Her AB calculus teacher would think that she deserves the A she is earning in his class. However, he is not very knowledgeable about the selective colleges admission. This is why I posted my question on CC.
Edit to add that the Cal AB is one year class, Cal BC is one year class, Linear Algebra and Multivariable Cal combine is one year class. @ClassicRockerDad
For some schools, it is a normal sequence to have AB then BC. For other schools, most students skip AB.
colleges wouldn’t know that your HS isn’t a “AB first, BC second” school, so she could take BC senior year and they wouldn’t mind/care.
She should be aware that math in college will be paced like the high school calculus BC course.
What I meant was what does the AB Calculus teacher recommend that she take next year. She can’t be the only student who has ever been in this situation. I’m sure that this road has been paved before.
Thanks to all contributed your thoughts.
This is the recommendation in school’s program guide:
Pre-Cal => Cal AB => AP Statistics
Pre-Cal => AP Statistics => Cal AB OR Cal BC
Pre-Cal => Cal BC => Multivariable Cal/Linear Algebra OR AP Statistics
Now I see the source of your question and concern. I now think it’s a good question.
Both Calculus AB and AP Statistics are 1 semester college courses that are taught to HS students over the course of 1 year. The BC track is really the rigorous math track, but it’s generally about 50% harder than an honors precalculus class.
The Calculus AB class is a little easier than an honors pre-calculus class.
AP Statistics in many schools is a great way for students who don’t excel at math to get an AP credit so that they will meet their colleges math requirement and never have to take math again. If your D shies away from math, it might not be a bad choice. However, I think the most competitive schools would like to see BC Calculus if it is available. Should she go that route, less than half of the material over the year will be new material. It’s kind of a waste of a lot time and doesn’t really reflect the kind of rigor that competitive schools expect.
In my experience, a school that even offers BC Calculus is either very large, or sends a large fraction of it’s population to competitive schools, so most colleges will know that your school offers direct admission to BC calculus from precalculus.
Is there a local college where she can take Calculus II that could be followed by multivariable calculus? That’s the logical next class and what she would take in college if she were pursuing a STEM or econ track?
If your only choices are AP Stats or BC, probably AP Stats has more new material. In some schools it’s not really the gut course it was designed as.
@ClassicRockerDad, thank you for your detailed explanations. It makes sense to me.
DD’s school only has a small portion of students go to the top 15 schools.
Taking Cal II at local college is a good idea but logistically would not work due to her EC’s.
If DD takes both AP Cal BC and AP Statistics (see original post for schedule) for her senior year, how would that be viewed by top colleges?
It’d be fine to take just AP Calc BC or both Calc BC and Stats. It really wouldn’t matter how she got to BC as long as she gets good grades - and with AB under her belt, the first semester of BC should seem fairly simple (like a very fast-paced review).
Thanks to everyone who shared your thoughts.
It seems that her plan of taking AP Cal BC as well as AP Stats next year is fine.
There would be no problem taking both BC and Statistics. The first half of BC will be review, which will be fine since she’ll be busy working on applications. I agree that there are so many schools that make students take AB before BC that unless your GC specifically mentions it, admissions officers are unlikely to think twice about it. If she just wants to take BC, I think that would be okay too. I think AP Statistics is not a very useful course (better take a real statistics course in college that is calculus based), but it will give a nice intro to the subject.