<p>Hi im a junior in high school who has finished all the available math courses at my school.</p>
<p>So for next year, i'm thinking about taking multi-variable calc./diff. eq. at a local university. Is it worth my time and effort to do something like this? How much would this help my admissions chances at a top school?</p>
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<li><p>Never take a class just because it looks good. Your missing out on so much in life…colleges can usually tell if your just taking the class to get in.</p></li>
<li><p>Yes, you should take them, but try to stay FAR AWAY from the reasons I warned against above…just don’t do it. You won’t be happy if you do, trust me. Do it to learn a little something about the world…believe me, that will look better than anything else.</p></li>
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<p>^thanks for the advice. appreciate it.</p>
<p>i want to take the class because i think the stuff is interesting/cool; if it helps with admission, then even better.</p>
<p>just of curiosity, how do colleges know if you’re taking a class “just to get in” - i mean, it’s just a class isn’t it? how much can they tell just by that?</p>
<p>Assuming that your passion or interests are in mathematics (as you are clearly advancing at an accelerated pace), it would be logical for an admissions officer to look at your transcript and expect many more challenging if not college mathematics courses on it.</p>
<p>I can speak from my personal experience that taking mathematics courses and not being shy about pursuing every opportunity relating to mathematics helped my application. Like you, I exhausted the high school mathematics curriculum quite quickly (BC Calculus and Statistics in freshman year) and went on to take courses up to functional analysis. I, however, self-studied Multivariable and began with diffeqs, gradually moving into more abstract mathematics. If you are sure that mathematics is something you would like to pursue to your utmost ability, it would be advisable to take the course.</p>
<p>It may also be helpful to note that Harvard does not offer transfer credit for courses taken at other universities, so to get out of the traditional Linear Algebra/Analysis freshman course you’ll have to place out of it with a placement test.</p>
<p>Doing Olympiad math is SOOO much more helpful that doing cookbook versions of College Math courses (Although Diff Eqs and MVC are going to be Plug and Chug unless one does them in the context of analysis anyway but what can you do) anyway I recommend doing Olympiad Stuff and if you want teach yourself the College Math stuff, get a basic grounding so that you can uderstand some of the concepts before taking it for real.</p>
<p>I am assuming that you want to do like because you love math, not to impress an adcom. If this is not the case, I wouldn’t help even if I could.</p>