Will taking pre-college level math courses hurt my application?

Transfer Students
1

<p>I took a placement exam at my community college around this time last year and did poorly on it so they placed me in a pre-college level math class for the first two semesters and then I can take regular math courses this fall. However, I spoke to the dean of math at my school and she told me that give my ACT score and the grades I have in both courses (the first was about 103% and this one is about 99%) that there is a very good chance that I was misplaced and that I can take the placement exam over when I please.</p>

<p>Now, this is all well and dandy by I'm afraid that if I do take the test again and do poorly (I have really bad test anxiety) again, I'll be sucked back into square one as the reason I didn't retake it before I started my math course was that you could only take it twice and they take the most recent score, not the highest.</p>

<p>I'm a chemistry major (planning on double majoring in English) and talked about this problem with a counselor at my school and two science professors. One thought that I should reconsider taking it while the other professor and the counselor told me not to because it was only a few more weeks before I'd be in the class I should've been to start with and I didn't want to risk doing poorly and having to start again at square 1 in another freakin' algebra course.</p>

<p>But, my HS transcript shows that i've taken pre-calc, trig and calculus in high school and passed each course with a high A, if that makes any difference. For whatever reason, they decided that they weren't going to use HS transcripts to place students at this campus (even though I graduated in 2009, so they are recent) and I'll have to take more classes I should have to take because of it (4 math classes and two beginning French courses. It's absurd and costing my family extra $$$).</p>

<p>I'm just worried that when I fill out my apps to transfer for next fall, these classes might hurt me even though I plan on taking calculus at my CC so that when I transfer I'll only have a semester or two left of math. My GPA is a 4.0 if that makes any difference and I've had close to, if not over 100% in all the classes I've taken up to this point.</p>

2

<p>Take Calculus this year and stop worrying about this one. The colleges you apply to are familiar with community colleges and will figure out that you wiped out on the placement exam. There is no point in re-taking the placement exam now unless it could place you out of Calculus 1 and let you go straight into Calculus 2.</p>

<p>But you may want to get some help with the test anxiety issue. Check with your CC’s counseling center to find out if they have any workshops for this kind of thing. You are going to be facing these exams off and on for the rest of your life so you should try to sort your issues out now.</p>

3

<p>I’ve looked into that and I’m pretty sure that they offer them in the fall, when they have the most incoming students. But I started there in the spring, so I missed the last one but I think I’ll go to the next one.</p>

<p>It was really bad on my ACT. I was spaced out as it is, but I was shaking so badly in the beginning that I could barely hold the pencil upright. As the tests have gotten more and more important, the anxiety and nerves have gotten a lot worse.</p>

<p>I can’t take Calculus yet. I’d have to wait until next summer. There’s this bloated algebra sequence that leads up to it. The only way I could get around that would be to take pre-calc in the spring, but I none of the counselors I’ve spoken to seem to know how to actually get in that course since they’d normally use HS records, but they aren’t now for whatever reason.</p>