hi im currently Junior in my high school
I wonder if i should take Physcis C next year in my Senior year. Currently I am taking Physics 1, and I keep my grade
near low Bs. So I am kind of worried for Physics C.
Also should I take calc AB or BC?
Calculus BC covers material at college pace, while calculus AB covers material at a slower pace.
so level is not that different…hm
Colleges commonly allow high enough BC scores to skip the first year of calculus, but commonly allow high enough AB scores to skip only the first semester of calculus. (Students considering skipping may want to try the college’s old final exams of the courses to be skipped to verify their knowledge of the material by the college’s standards.)
Calculus is a world’s difference from Pre-Calc in terms of difficulty. Don’t overload yourself or expect an A in AB calc. A lot of times the actual college course is much harder than the AP equivalent for math.
How much college math they give you credit for depends on the school. Cal, for example, gives credit for math 1A & 1B if you pass the Calculus BC exam. Other UCs, such as UCLA or Davis, give 8 units credit which is 2 quarters worth of math, not 3 (a full year). Since the OP hasn’t said he is a CA resident, it is worth looking into the credit at the schools she/he is thinking about.
I’d also say that Calc BC goes at a slower pace than college. At UCLA, for example, the 2 quarters of math classes take 20 weeks. Subtract off “dead” week, the 10th week of classes which are traditionally used for review and summation, and that’s 18 weeks. In HS you’ll take the AP tests in May, so you’ve had about 35 weeks of class. The difference is even more stark if you look at class hours. A UC class will meet for 1 hour 3x a week; a HS class meets daily. So the material covered in 54 hours of instruction (heck, use the 10th week and make it 60 hours) is covered in 175 hours of instruction in HS.
How are you doing in pre-calc? It sounds like AB might be a better fit for you. I don’t think you need to take another physics course unless you want to go into engineering.
Probably true for several of the UCs. The quarter system UCs seem to cover it in 2 quarters (20 weeks of instruction or 2/3 of a year). UCB on the semester system covers it in about 1+2/3 semester (25 weeks of instruction or 5/6 of a year) and adds introductory differential equations in the last 5 weeks of calculus.
MIT’s 18.01 appears to cover all of BC in one semester. Caltech and Harvey Mudd also accelerate calculus and make it theory intensive.
But it does appear that many other colleges consider the BC material the same as first year calculus, based on subject credit and placement policies.