<p>I am currently attending a C.C. in Illinois and am planning on transferring to UIUC in the Fall '10. I had a question about my upcoming Fall class schedule, UIUC requires that Calc 2 needs to be completed for sophomore level transfer and pre req to Calc 2 is Calc 1 (obviously). My question is, how difficult is the transition into Calc 1 without taking pre-calc prior to that? I obviously know it is not a blow off class and a lot of time and effort will be put into this class because my chances of admissions are dependent on my technical GPA. I would just like to know the level of difficulty of the class overall and if it is possible to be successful without pre-calc.</p>
<p>It could just be that my Pre-Calc class sucked (which it did), but Pre-Calc skills really have nothing to do with Calc at all. It would be nice to have an extra year of algebra practice, since Calc problems usually require multiple tricky “steps” to solve, but you should do fine without the nonsense that is Pre-Calc.</p>
<p>That’s the same advice a family member gave me as well. Thank you very much for the response. Now I’m not going to stress about calc 1 as much knowing that it is a fresh course and it is mine to lose.</p>
<p>Just study your trig :)</p>
<p>My son, a 4.0 GPA civil engineering rising senior, says he thought pre-calc was a waste of his time as a pre-requisite to Calc 1.</p>
<p>My daughter, a rising high school sophomore, did not take pre-calc and is currently taking Calc 1 this summer at a community college. She took a qualifying test and blew right past the requirements and went straight to Calc 1, bypassing pre-calc.</p>
<p>In my opinion, Pre-Calc was just an additional year of math that gave you more experience with math and reviewed and enriched your Algebra 2 understanding</p>
<p>You might want to learn trig graphing, basic limits, sequences & series, and rationals however. Those were the only real NEW topics covered</p>
<p>if you do decide to skip precalc make sure to study the following</p>
<p>-limits
-ARITHMETIC SKILLS (one of the biggest reasons why students screw up calculus)
-TRIGONOMETRY (seriously know your trig, it will kick you in the face every single time you enter a new unit)
-polar
-vectors</p>
<p>As I said know your arithmetic skills. As I wrote about calculus itself isn’t tricky. The concepts are easy to learn. But what screws people over is that after students set up a calculus problem they mess up in the following algebra. A lot of college calculus textbooks have a review over all the necessary arithmetic skills. I suggest you go over them</p>
<p>Calc I may be easier at a CC, but if it’s like AP Calc, Trig functions will totally lose you if you haven’t studied them before. That being said, Analytic Geometry isn’t really needed for Calc, but basic Trig is - I’d just learn SOHCAHTOA, the Unit Circle and the Identities. If you plan on taking Calc III, I believe you’ll need to know how to do some coordinate transformations (Polar Coordinates instead of Cartesian or something). I can’t remember if that’s Calc II or III, but this question comes up a lot.</p>
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<p>Polar stuff is typically re-addressed in Calculus II.</p>
<p>precalc (at least in high school) has almost nothing to do with calc I other than some simple derivatives and vectors. Trust me you don’t need it for calc I.</p>
<p>Bump, I was just reading over the responses because I’m starting school on Monday. Thanks for everyone who replied to my question.</p>