Hi parents. The last two days my son, his guidance counselor and I have scrambled to bring up his math rigor. He was scheduled to take AP Calc AB this (his senior year) but his school offers BC. From what I’ve learned math rigor is maybe one of the most essential components of his application. His counselor had the idea to register him for Calc I and II at our local community college (dual enrollment.) That way he’ll have calc II on his transcript for applications, though he won’t take it til spring (he’ll take calc I this fall).
Anyone have any idea how admissions will view this? He’s a 4.0 (uw) student w a lot of 5s on APs.
Taking a class not offered at your own HS is fine! Taking a class which IS offered…and can be scheduled…raises a question. Does your son think this is a good idea?
He does. The difference is that DE is compressed (one semester vs two for AP) so he’ll get further overall … the guidance counselor is going to reach out to a few admissions reps to see what they say, but that may take a few days. Was hoping someone on here had some experience with this. Guidance counselor said she’d advocate and address reasons in her recommendation but who knows if they get read (some places.) I can see how it could raise questions!
I guess bc we sat in on enough CS info sessions this summer and were told “highest level of rigor offered by school in math.” Not ivys saying this either. It’s just gotten so competitive and he’s such a standout otherwise. Think it might be worth a try.
Ah, OK. I misunderstood. I thought the HS offered only BC, not separate AB and BC courses.
If he wants to do DE for reasons other than admissions, fine, assuming it won’t impact his other activities including writing applications. If he (or you or the counselor), think that DE vs AB will be “better” for admissions, and will be the reason for acceptance vs rejected, it won’t.
CS info sessions are not meant to be blanket statements covering all 10000 people in the room. Here is the list of colleges that expect calc 2 in HS:
There are none
Taking the highest level of math available is nuanced. If the HS offers mvc and you’re on track to take it as a senior because you took algebra 1 as a 6th grader, then you should take it. But if you go to a crappy school (and it’s only crappy by College Confidential standards) where your progression gets you “only” to AB, then take AB. Yes, there are acceleration options along the way, but they all come with downsides. And again, no college expects BC.
I sure hope you’re right. Our HS makes it SO hard to accelerate once you make that decision NOT to have your 12-13 year old child take a math class over the summer.
Yes, normal college pace is similar to calculus BC (including AB material) in one year, while calculus AB covers material more slowly.
What is the context of this notion, and the notion that calculus 2 versus calculus 1 or AB is significant for this purpose? It may be helpful to mention the desired colleges and intended major.
Note that only a few US colleges and universities require or recommend calculus while in high school for frosh admission (and they do not specify calculus 2 or BC).
While accelerating an additional semester of math may be less essential than you might believe, one advantage of taking a college course (at an actual college, not “college in the high school”) while in high school is getting experience with how a college course runs (meaning less supervision and requiring more self motivation and time management) before jumping into the deep end as a college frosh.
In some cases, it may be “taking the highest level of math available to you”, meaning the highest level that you can reach based on following the math sequence after your middle school math placement, even if students with higher middle school math placement may be offered a more advanced course.
Personally, I would take a step back and think about just what this kid wants to do in terms of their math progression, for their own purposes and given their own interests and given competing priorities for their time and energy.
As I understand it, the basic issue here is like many high schools, this high school does Calc 1 in one year, and then Calc 2 in a second year. Some high schools have the option of doing Calc 1 and 2 in a single year (the standard college pace), but not this HS.
OK, so does this kid actually want to do Calc 1 and 2 in a single year? I think some kids would actually prefer the faster pace that requires, they would also like getting further ahead in the main math progression before they start college, and so on. But for other kids, this would not be something they would prefer, or at least not at the cost it would impose given their other priorities.
OK, so suppose this kid said if it were just up to them, doing just Calc 1 in a year was fine with them. Then I agree with the others here–if that is the natural next step in their math progression at their HS, that is very likely fine.
The only nuance I would add is there are maybe a few colleges, or schools or majors within some colleges, which are really most suitable for the kid who would be eager to take the more accelerated pace. Not because they had to for those programs, but because they just really liked math and wanted more math.
But if that is not your kid, then I would not be particularly eager to funnel your kid to those colleges/programs anyway. So again, I would start with figuring out what this kid actually wanted to do. And if that is taking a year for Calc 1 through a normal HS class as the next step in their progression, I would be confident that is fine for the colleges/programs which this kid should actually be considering anyway.
We had similar concerns. My son is planning to major in math in college, and is taking AB his senior year. There are only four kids who are taking BC, and they had to get into this track in 10th grade. My son had a rough year with his Algebra II teacher and didn’t make the cut. We were concerned that he would be at a disadvantage, but his precalculus teacher said that he should get the strongest math foundation possible before college. Our son is finding AB very easy in terms of content, as he already did all of the work for it on his own last year. However, he said that it’s helping him fine tune and reinforce concepts and he’s glad he didn’t push to jump ahead to BC this year.