What do colleges think of people taking regular Calculus instead of AP Calculus AB/BC?

I currently am not doing too great in Honors Precalculus, where I will probably end with a B. Our school has it that anyone without a B+ cannot do AP Calculus AB, but they can do regular calculus.
What do college think of this? Obviously they won’t think I’m dumb, especially because most people are taking Precalculus senior year, but will they look at it more negatively?
Also, would it be a bad idea to take the AP Calculus AB Exam if I am only taking regular Calculus?

Hey there!

As a senior, I had taken precal Honors last year and had a 99% in the class. I DROPPED AP CALC AB this year b/c all students from last year (and even this year) had C’s and D’s. In my school theres AP calc AB/BC and Regular Stats. So, you either choose to go into a maximum extreme math class or a maximum extreme elementary math class.

I would love to have taken regular calculus, but sadly my school doesnt even offer it. So I think you’re very lucky.

If you can’t understand or at least have a 90% in pre-cal, then regular calc wouldn’t hurt you.

Also, AP CALC AB goes wayyyyy into depth of different math topics and laws and applicable situations, and unlike regular calc, they only reteach you stuff in pre cal like derivatives and optimization stuff. In other words, regular calc doesn’t even teach more than half of the stuff AP calc teaches you. So, if you’re planning to take the ap calc exam with only taking regular calc, its basically a 10% you’ll pass because those AP CALC kids already have the experience of many exam-like problems and ARE ready and have the laws in their head.

My state only offers Honors versions of advanced math classes (Honors Pre-Calculus, Honors Trigonometry, and Honors/AP Calculus). Even so, I still believe that taking regular calculus in high school is looked upon favorably. There are exceptionally few colleges in America that require calculus from incoming freshmen at all, so I would think taking any calculus would be considered exceeding expectations, for the most part.

I wouldn’t recommend taking the AP Calculus exam after a high school calculus class. At my school, Honors Calculus is intended to prepare students for college-level calculus rather than serve as a college-level calculus course itself. However, I’ve never taken calculus and I don’t plan to, so I can’t speak from personal experience.