<p>Next year I will take CP Precalculus, but if I take it online over the summer I will take Honors or AP Calculus next year (senior year). I'm debating if I really want to do the online course or not.</p>
<p>PROS
I will have one more AP class on my transcript
I will have a knowledge of calculus before attending college</p>
<p>CONS
I do not think online learning will work very well for me in math
Looking through my girlfriend's AP Calc book, I wonder if I won't do poorly in that class (math has never been my best subject)
I want to be able to do other things this summer rather than an online class</p>
<p>So, do the pros outweigh the cons? What advice do you guys have? I will be applying to some top-tier schools (my top choices are Duke and Rice), and wonder if CP Math will hurt my chances. I am in honors or AP for all other classes.</p>
<p>I’d recommend it if you think there’s any way you can do reasonably well in it. Textbooks usually make things more confusing than they need to be.
Have you taken online classes in other subjects? Mine involved a lot of learning on your own, but there are tons of math resources on the Internet. And it won’t take up the whole summer at all. However, if you think you’d have trouble learning in that format, that could be a problem.</p>
<p>If you’ve never been good at math, I would definitely not do it. Online math learning is difficult because there’s no ‘lecture’ or ‘examples’ done in class-- there are sometimes videos, abut in my experience, a lot of students don’t watch them (or try to skim through them). Online math learning requires a lot of self-initiative and, IMO, a little bit of innate math affinity, and can be viciously hard if not.</p>
<p>If you do do it, line up a tutor ahead of time-- sometimes even seeing somebody do it and read the words off of the screen make a huge difference with math. As another option, is there a way to take the class during summer school?</p>
<p>Precalculus is one of those classes that has very little to do with calculus, but will introduce trig (which is infinitely important in calc) and beef up your algebra skills. If you are planning on doing any type of further math in your life (pursuing an engineering/cs degree), having a weak math foundation can kill you. If you’re pursuing a social science degree or something, it’s not all that important, but I’d still get a tutor.</p>
<p>If you find yourself asking questions alot in math during school hours, its not the greatest idea to take math online as its more independent so you must be able to grasp concepts</p>
<p>^^
I doubt they’d care if you took higher-level math after pre-calc. I mean, taking CP pre-calculus and then AP Calculus would be better than just taking honors pre-calculus.</p>
<p>So yeah, I will be taking AP Cal next year as a junior because I am 100% sure that I’m going to get 90+ on my Algebra 2/Trig regents…</p>
<p>Students in my grade(10th) are taking AP Cal and yet somehow they are struggling. Why? Maybe it’s because, from my assumption, that they had never taken Precal; this is why I’m self studying Precal now as I self-study more trig concepts.</p>
<p>I don’t think taking the online course will help because I can never focus learning stuff online, somehow it distracts me. </p>
<p>If you want to prepare yourself for Precal, I suggest that you get the “Precalculus the Easy Way”.</p>