I’m a junior and I’m currently in Algebra 2/ Trig. I want to be in AP Calculus by Senior year so do you think it’s a good idea to take Pre-Calculus over summer? Has anyone done this before? Was it hard? Should I take a summer course or an online course?
I think a summer course would be better, at least for me I’d prefer to have a teacher to ask questions in person to.
Parent here - my daughter took the pre-calc on-line class from BYU over the summer. She had the benefit of relatives that could easily jump in and help her out if needed.
The local summer classes in our area would have done the full year course in about 6 weeks, which was just too fast for us (and didn’t fit with other things in our schedule for the summer). She started the BYU course in April, and finished right before school started in September, which was a more realistic timeline in our opinion.
Just double check with your school what the requirements are for an out of district class - we had to have permission in advance, and we had to pay for the course, textbook and proctoring of the exams.
If you have access to some help if you need it, then the on-line class could work for you too - I would’t want to do it only with the on-line instructor.
I took trig from my local CC online over last summer, and am currently loving calculus. It can work (if you’re the very self-motivated type)!
As for difficulty- It was very hard. Some things don’t come naturally (product to summm formulas), and without a teacher to explain them you’ll spend hours reading the textbook in order to make it click. On the other hand this is a valuable skill, and it’s certainly doable.
For certain, any negatives from the online course were outweighed by the flexibility it provided me. I was able to really enjoy my summer while also learning interesting mathematics, and did quite well on the final.
Not to mention, the experience taught me how to teach myself! Now I’m better able to study subjects of interest alongside schoolwork than ever before.
The first thing I would do is ask your guidance counselor as to what classes would be acceptable…are there local CCs/schools that offer it?