What is AP Calculus BC like?

Hi guys! I’m on the track to taking AP Calculus BC and I’m nervous because I heard it is really hard so I was wondering your guys experience with the class. Is it hard to do well, and are the concepts hard to grasp? Thank you!

It’s really different for every student. Some kids find it hard, some easy, some somewhere in between. My S found the first segment rather easy and the 2nd segment medium in difficulty.

So hard to say. I discouraged my son who is a Junior from taking BC because a friend told me that a top student at her kids’ school was finding it extremely difficult. But a friend of my son’s is taking it and not finding it too bad at all, so my son is regretting not taking it now. On the other hand, he has straight As in AB calc, whereas he’s had lower math grades in the past due to carelessness and silly mistakes, so that looks nice on his transcript. I don’t really regret making him slow down a little bit.

Will you be taking it as a senior?

@moscott okay thank you! @Trixy34 thank you, and yes I will be taking it as a senior. However, the way my school does it the second semester of junior year precalc is the ap calculus bc curriculum.

So, maybe you have a sense of how you’ll do based on what you’re currently taking? Is there a teacher at your school you can talk to about it?

@Trixy34 I’m doing pretty well in my class right now so I hope that will translate to success in calc BC. I can talk to my school’s head of math department.

My S is taking it now in his junior year but 1 big help in his opinion was simultaneously taking physics.

@moscott When I take the class I will be in AP physics concurrently so that is good to hear. Thank you!

if you have taken AB, it really isn’t bad at all! It has many of the same concepts in the same format but you learn some new concepts, much less info than AB and the format of the AP test is pretty much the same