AB or BC Calculus Senior Year?

Elanorci
Sun, 07 Feb 2010 23:18:37 +0000

I was in a very similar situation at the beginning of this year. I’m a humanities person, and I had As in precal, but I had to work for them.
I chose to take BC for a number of reasons.
As Mifune said, the difference in the amount of material between AB and BC is not astronomically huge - and the BC AP test gives you a subscore, so you could still get AB credit. There’s no harm in trying.
As far as grades go, you’ll be okay if you can put in the time. Calc is the hardest class I’ve ever taken, but it’s still not unmanageable. I should add that I’m by no means particularly studious - I don’t do the homework every night, and I’ve often left the entire chapter until one or two days before the test. But at some point I do sit down and really learn the material, and it’s all fine.
In terms of how it will look to colleges, here’s my thinking. At this point, there’s little left you can do - that is, the majority of your app is set in stone. This is one thing you can do to get a slight advantage. I wanted to impress in any way that I could. I wanted to use every available outlet to prove that I’m up to a challenge.
Just my two cents. If you really think it’d be too hard for you, or if it has a killer reputation at your school, it probably won’t hurt you very much to take AB.