question about self study Calc BC

Twiggy22 · 11-05-2012, 06:05 PM

Ok so im taking calculus AB in school now as a junior .. and last quarter i passed with a B+ [89% .. one point away :'( ] .. and so i was wondering if i take the calculus BC exam with only taking the AB class and if i fail the BC exam .. can i during senior year take the calc BC class and take the BC exam ? ..

WiseGuy · 11-10-2012, 08:50 PM

Sure, you can take any exam as many times as you'd like. I'm not sure of your school's specific policies on that, but I doubt there would be any issue. If you're concerned, just ask your guidance counselor.

Calc AB is easy and straightforward. I'm not going to go over the specific differences and extra content found in BC, because you can find a vast wealth of that information online already. Rather, just be sure you're aware that the extra material in BC (equivalent to a whole other semester of calculus at most colleges) is tougher. You're going to have to work -- it isn't easy. Unless you're breezing through AB, or have some incredible passion for calculus, it may not be worth it.

Also, remember that the BC exam includes an AB subscore. So, let's say you took the exam with barely any knowledge of the additional BC material. You would probably get a 2 or so on the exam, but assuming you have a good grasp on the AB material, you can still get an AB subscore of 5, just as if you had taken the AB exam alone. The BC exam is designed this way.

rspence · 11-10-2012, 11:45 PM

I think you can theoretically score a 3 with only AB knowledge.

I suggest you either self-study BC on your own, or wait until next year to take the BC exam. Self-studying BC might be difficult since you're currently in AB, and most BC topics assume you already know AB. Once you get to integrals and integration methods you can self-study BC.

A side note, you don't need to know any calculus to understand sequences/series, or convergence/divergence of certain series, which are covered in BC. However you will learn that an infinite series converges iff the corresponding integral converges, so you should at least know how to integrate in order to use this test for convergence.