<p>so speaking as someone who has actually taken math 1a,
math 1a covers the material you’d learn in a calculus class,
except you don’t get questions like “calculate this integral”
(they assume you can already do everything in AP calculus)
you mostly get proofs
like remember the delta-epsilon definition of limit? there’s a lot of that sort of stuff in math 1a. also proving stuff about series.
and even when they ask you computational questions, you have to know the exact conditions under which theorems hold. like you’re not allowed to just use l’hopital’s rule, you have to prove you can use it.</p>
<p>if you have experience writing proofs math 1a is not that bad. a lot of people at caltech have trouble because they haven’t seen proofs in high school.
but if you do bad it doesn’t really matter anyway because it’s on pass-fail (nobody actually fails), and if you end up hating proofs you can choose to take all your other math classes on practical track.
so don’t worry about it</p>
<p>i would not call math 1a an analysis class,
certainly you don’t learn any analysis there,
but if you can do well in math 1a,
then analysis (at state schools at least) is very easy</p>