I am currently a sophomore in high school. I am thinking that I want to go into the premed track in college. I am trying to map out my schedule for the next two years so that I am taking the most effective and challenging courses at my school. I am a straight A student so my concern is not how well I will do in my classes, but more so what I am spending my time learning. For math, I am having a bit of trouble deciding what classes to take. So far I have taken:
Gifted and Talented Geometry- 9th grade
Gifted and Talented Algebra 2- 10th grade
( Gifted and talented is like an honors level class but for people who perform above average in math. You have to test into it, but it ends after one reaches 11th grade)
I was thinking of taking:
Precalcus/Trigometry - over the summer after 10th grade
( summer classes at my school are only offered as regular or on-level courses so I would have to supplement this with other resources to really learn the material.)
AP calculus AB- 11th grade
AP calculus BC- 12th grade
Many people who I know have taken AP calculus classes have said that BC is a repetition of AB for the most part. Also, colleges I have looked up usually let you take an advanced math class whether you take either AB or BC and do well. With that, I am left thinking that taking both might be a waste of time. In addition, I recently found out that Statistics is a required premed course in college. I know that medical schools don’t take AP credit, but I figured that having the knowledge from high school would be beneficial. Plus, because the class isn’t as hard, it might give me time to focus on my other coursework. If I take AP stats, my schedule would look like this:
AP statistics- 11th grade
Precalculus/Trigonometry- over the summer after 11th grade
AP calculus BC- 12th grade
So my question is whether I should take AP calculus AB and BC or just BC with AP stats?
Where have they taken these courses, as that’s not the College Board course content?
My D’s Calc teacher says they review the AB material for 4-6 weeks, because the review is required, and then move to new content.
If you’re a strong math student, going directly to BC should be fine. I was one of about 40 kids in my HS who chose that option and we were all fine. (I wish my D’s HS provided the option).
I would rather see you take precalc as a full year course at your school (if they offer honors, take the honors) and then take Calc AB or BC (based on how you do) the following year. Establishing the strongest possible foundations in math will serve you well in the future and I don’t think that a summer course can go over the topics covered in precalc in enough depth. You will take Stats in college as a premed and I prefer most college courses to the AP level offerings.
Medical Schools care about your college courses (the pre-med ones), your GPA, MCAT score, your medical volunteering/shadowing, Leadership in ECs.
They don’t care about HS.
Colleges care about HS and what you take…but they don’t care that you want to be pre-med…just what your major is. High levels of math is not really needed for Pre-med (unless you want to be an engineering major). So taking Pre-calc junior year and Calc AB or BC Senior year is fine.
When you think about pre-med pre requisites, e.g., Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Organic Chemistry, Calculus etc. you need to know if AP credit will be okay for this or not. If they do let you use the AP credit, then you will often have to take upper-level courses in that area to satisfy the requirement. But, since Med Schools are all about GPA, it isn’t always to your benefit to take as many college credits in HS as possible in the med school pre-req area as it will be harder to get a good GPA.
I had missed the summer detail above - taking a non-honors pre-Calc course and moving directly to Calc BC is a risky strategy. AP Stats is algebra-based so you’ll need to take a Calc-based Stats course in college anyway, if Stats is needed for medical school.
Perhaps an honors PreCalc/Calc BC sequence is better, with summer time invested in either a standard Stats class, Stats self-study, or something else (because a “background” in Stats prior to a college course in a few years isn’t really that valuable, IMO).