Just curious… although it all depends on each school and the area you live in…
This is actually rather common.
If you are wondering if Calc BC Senior is late, its not.
They really don’t care that much if you had Calculus III etc. in high school. They are looking at your grades, test scores, and ECs.
I tutored a white girl who didn’t have BC calculus and needed a lot of lessons to get As in AB Calculus and a top math level II score. The only place she was outright rejected was MIT. So I would say not having BC Calculus and not being at a top level with math might be a problem for top engineering schools.
Asians taking BC as seniors are rare-generally they will take Calc BC as juniors.
At least that’s the case in my son’s school and the Asian kid that takes BC as a senior or heaven forbid AB is an outlier. Although my son had 2 friends who are Chinese and ended up taking Calc AB. It didn’t hurt them much as one is going to NYU Stern and the other is at USC deciding between History and Marshall.
Perhaps in specific elite high schools, but that is doubtful in general.
Only about 44 thousand students took the AP calculus BC exam in 11th grade or earlier in 2017, according to https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/research/2017/Program-Summary-Report-2017.pdf . Even if they were all Asian (which they are not), that would be far too few Asian high school students (there are about 3.6 million per grade).
From what I have seen/heard in the valley of silicon, the really insane high schools (Gunn, Paly, Saratoga, Monta Vista, Lynbrook, Mission San Jose), the majority of the kids in BC are 11th grade Asian kids. Of course the Asian category is nebulous since you have the East Asian/South Asian kids (Chinese, Korean, Indian) who are the high achievers and Southeast Asian kids who don’t have the resources and don’t end up in the AP classes.
Son’s BC class of 30 kids had 5 seniors and they happened to be non-Asian. The only senior who happened to be Chinese decided to drop down to AB. Didn’t affect him that much since he was accepted to WashU for BME.
This thread has kind of worried me… I"m an Asian sophomore (girl), and would I be at a disadvantage if I am taking AP Calc BC as a senior? At my school, only seniors take AP Calc BC, and we follow this advanced math path (geometry honors, algebra 2 honors, pre-calc honors, ap calc ab or bc). My school has just started allowing freshmen skip math levels, whereas they didn’t allow people in my grade skip math levels, which is why there are a few freshmen currently in Algebra II Honors (instead of geometry honors), one freshman in precalc honors, and one freshman in AP Calc BC.
Would this hurt me, especially because I’m Asian??
Most high schools, even in the area, are not “really insane” ones like those. Do not assume that what may be common at those high schools is the norm elsewhere.
Do not worry. Calculus in 12th grade is fine.
Dude I’m sure people who took pre calculus senior year got in. You don’t have to be 2 years ahead.
Dup
Being Asian does not automatically install a “good at math gene very young” in you.
Walking away, shaking head.