Should I retake Honors Precalc?

Pre-College Issues High School Life
1

I got a 4 Bs my sophomore year of high school. I want to make it to one of the more prestigious UC schools or Ivy leagues, and so I was thinking of retaking my honors precalc class online. In honors precalc I got 2 Bs. Should I retake the class? And how is retaking it going to affect my chances in getting into those schools?

2

How have you done in trigonometry and in algebra? Was your trigonometry included in precalc, or was it a separate class?

My recollection is that calculus depends a lot on precalc, trigonometry, and algebra. Students who have done very well in all three of these seem to find calculus easy. People who have struggled with these seem to find calculus difficult. This would suggest that retaking precalc over the summer might help you do better in calculus.

3

I would talk to your guidance counselor to find out if they will allow you to retake a class for grade replacement for a B and if it needs to be from a specific place etc before doing anything. However if you feel your weak in a specific area there is no reason you can’t study that on your own over the summer to be better prepared for next year even if it doesn’t count for school.

4

http://www.math.buffalo.edu/rur/rurci3.cgi may help you determine what precalculus concepts you may need to review before calculus.

5

I did talk to my counselor and she said that the online course replaces my previous grade, my only question is how do colleges view replaced courses? Thank you all for your advice.

6

Different colleges have different policies on repeated courses. You may want to check your colleges of interest.

However, repeating a B grade will probably look like grade grubbing if there is any subjective or holistic review in the college’s admission process.

7

thank you! I really appreciate the advice!

8

where can I find those policies? And to UC schools would it look as though I am grade grubbing?

9

For UC, http://admission.universityofcalifornia.edu/counselors/files/csu-uc-a-g-comparison-matrix.pdf says this:

So repeating a B grade will not help you with respect to UC recalculation of GPA, and it may look like grade grubbing to an admission reader at UC or other highly selective college.

10

alright thanks