<p>I am currently taking honors precalc (Im doing quite well and am understanding the material) and will most likely be majoring in engineering come the fall. There are many other seniors in my highschool that have taken precalc junior year and are now in honors or AP calc as seniors. My question I guess is will I be at a disadvantage in college (as an engineering major) not taking calc in high school?<br>
Thanks!</p>
<p>not one bit… you actually might be at an advantage. In my experience, calculus isn’t taught nearly as well at the high school level as it is at the college level. Many high school calculus people I’ve seen tend to struggle in Calc II in college.</p>
<p>What school/major are you planning on?</p>
<p>The only disadvantage I could see is a tier 1 engineering school might like to see calc. on your transcript.</p>
<p>Overall you will be at a disadvantage, however in one way you will have an advantage. Your advantage will be you will know you haven’t taken calculus before and therefore will need to work hard where as others think they have already learned all of this stuff and don’t need to really try at all.</p>
<p>I had not taken calculus in high school and while I got an A in calculus 1 I definitely had to put in more work than others. I remember being taught ‘the chain rule’ which is incredibly easy but at the time I felt intimidated because everyone else laughed and scoffed when they heard the chain rule was the topic to learn for that day.</p>
<p>Best situation: You place out of Calc II coming in to college
2nd Best: You haven’t had calc, but will be learning it from a college professor
3rd best: You had an easy Calc I class, place out of it and get demolished by calc II.</p>
<p>Obviously if you know you are great at math none of this applies to you for it really won’t matter. But if you’re kind of weak it sort of plays in your favor to have it taught to you in college rather than high school, for if you aren’t great at math, calc II will be tough either way.</p>
<p>A few super-elite science and engineering schools have nearly all students entering having taken some calculus. They then make everyone relearn calculus with extra theory.</p>
<p>But most schools, including those with good reputations for engineering, structure engineering programs with the assumption that the student will begin with calculus in freshman year. However, the schedule can be rather right, as there can be some rather long chains of prerequisites to take. For example, there is a UC Berkeley electrical engineering course that is at the end of a 7 (semester) course long prerequisite chain. Students who have credit for freshman calculus and understood the material well* can effectively shorten these long prerequisite chains by starting a semester or two ahead in math and a semester ahead in physics and get some “breathing room” in their schedule.</p>
<ul>
<li>Some schools suggest that students with AP calculus scores less than 5 may want to consider starting over the calculus sequence, even if credit is given for scores of 4 or 3.</li>
</ul>
<p>For what it is worth, the highest math course I had in high-school was analytic geometry, which as it turned out was the analytic portions of a Calculus course without doing derivatives and limits, etc.</p>
<p>I said all of that just to say that I did not have Calculus in high school and graduate with a Math degree as an undergraduate…so doing an Engineering program is not going to put you at a disadvantage.</p>
<p>Thanks for all the replies
@ nolaguy33 i was accepted to Rutgers and the University of Pittsburgh as an undecided major but I since I do have some interest in engineering they told me to switch the major on my application to engineering (they say its much harder to switch into the engineering school after the 1st semester than it is to be admitted originally) so I am waiting to hear back from their engineering schools. I still am waiting on Boston University, Northeastern University, and UMiami. As for a particular type of engineering right now i am looking into either environmental or mechanical but still am not sure.</p>
<p>*noleguy33</p>
<p>I wish I was in your situation instead of mine OP, and here’s why. My junior year I took regular precalculus, and this year i’m taking “Topics in Calculus”. It’s a lower level AP calc AB class. Anyway, I had to take a calculus placement exam at the college I’m going to next year, and of course it’s all based on precalculus material. I don’t have my score from it yet but I can already say I didn’t do too well on it and will most likely place into college precalc next year (at best). So if I took honors precalc this year instead of topics in calc, I would have done well on this placement exam and would have been able to start out with calc 1 in college instead of starting with college precalc…</p>
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<p>Why not take precalculus during the summer at a community college, so that you won’t delay your progress by taking precalculus at your university? Spending a semester taking precalculus at your university delays taking freshman calculus, which delays taking physics, which delays taking most engineering courses, which will likely delay graduation.</p>
<p>^ That sounds like a good idea if they allow me to do that, I guess I’ll find out tomorrow when I get my test results.</p>