So I’m between taking AB vs BC calculus in school. I did make a post about this earlier in junior year, but now as a rising senior I’m much more educated about college and requirements that I feel the need to once again ask the fellow companions of College Confidential for proper advice.
I completed IB SL Mathematics in school, but I don’t know whether to go onto AB or BC. I was a B student (teacher was kind of hard) but got a 5 on the IB exam. BC is more rigorous, but some people say AB and BC look the same. What would you recommend taking for a person applying to GTech, Columbia, Duke for either Chemical Engineering (in GTech) or Chemistry (in Duke)?
BC is better because it is a year of college math opposed to a semester of college math that is AB.
I would recommend the class that you think you will do best in. If you think you can handle the rigor of BC then do it, if not, then do AB and know that colleges won’t reject you because you took Calc AB opposed to Calc BC.
Two questions:
Overall is your college counselor likely to characterize your high school coursework “most rigorous” or less than that? If he’ll characterize it as “most selective” the choice of AB vs. BC is unlikely to matter.
Are you much more likely to get an “A” in AB versus BC in the first semester of your senior year. Unless you end up on a waiting list only your first semester grades matter for admissions. If you think you can work hard enough to get an “A” in either then take BC. Otherwise take AB.
For the majors you want to do BC is much better. BC is where you learn how to actually use the stuff in AB to do non-menial tasks. Also learning polar and parametric is very helpful for modeling everything in the real world. BC will make the college classes you take easier and you will probably learn more from them but if you just take AB that wouldn’t hurt your ability to produce actual grades but your understanding might be a bit lack luster.
BC is generally equivalent to a year of college calculus, while AB is generally equivalent to a semester (it can depend on the college).
Since you had IB math SL, which includes precalculus and a light introduction to calculus, you should be ready to take calculus at the same pace that colleges teach it at (i.e. BC).
You can also try these on-line quizzes to see if you need to review anything from precalculus:
http://www.math.buffalo.edu/rur/rurci3.cgi
http://math.tntech.edu/e-math/placement/index.html
https://math.berkeley.edu/courses/choosing/placement-exam
@throckmorten is BC necessary for just a Chemistry major?
@ucbalumnus Thanks for the links!
It’s not necessary; in fact no major ‘requires’ AP Calc BC out of high school.
If you want to skip a year of math, take BC. If you want to skip a semester, take AB.
A chemistry major will have calculus as a graduation requirement. Calculus does not have to be taken in high school, although calculus taken in high school with a sufficiently high score on the AP test may allow you to start in a more advanced course than the usual calculus 1 (effectively giving an additional free elective in your four year schedule due to not having to take calculus 1, or perhaps two free electives if you can skip calculus 1 and 2 with BC credit).