<p>We Canadians eh - we don’t call it calculus, but calculASS… because it stinks eh! That’s fer all you ignorant Americans out there.</p>
<p>Ignorant Americans. Let’s notice America, a very young country, with the vast majority of top universities in the world. What happened, Canada, why aren’t there such good universities there? Do you not have enough qualified kids to really create a market for top schools? Oh, crap!</p>
<p>[yeah, some of that argumentation is crap, but w/e]</p>
<p>I was joking, btw- poking fun at that (fellow) Canadian who called Americans ignorant, and poking a little fun at Canadian people in general.</p>
<p>Is there anything you can do to skip the first year( or at least the first semester calculus) in UT other than doing the IB program?</p>
<p>so does the course calculus and vectors still contain calculus though? There’s AP calculus and vectors at my school, is that calculus AB or BC?? I am so confused and I am in TO!!</p>
<p>Vector calc is touched upon towards the end of the Calc BC AP curriculum here in the states.</p>
<p>okay, so this means that I will be okay (with just learning in school) when taking the Calc BC AP exam?</p>
<p>Okay, damage control. Like some of the very nice and definitely not rude people have stated before, 12th grade in Ontario has three pre-universitary math classes: Data Management (basically stats), Geometry and Discrete Mathematics, and Advanced Functions and Introductory Calculus. for the 2007-2008 school year, some changes will take place. Data management will remain the way it is, and Geometry and Discrete Mathematics will be cut out of the curriculum (but I think it will somehow be integrated into the other classes). Now is where the calculus comes in. Advanced Functions and Introductory Calculus will turn into just Advanced Functions, and a new class called Calculus and Vectors will be added. The exact curricula for these new classes still hasn’t been determined, but rough versions have been released.</p>
<p>I’m happy with this change because the Calculus in the new ‘Calculus and Vectors’ class is much harder than it was in ‘Advanced Functions and Introductory Calculus’.</p>
<p>thx rockermcr…so this means that there is actually calculus, actually more than what we have in previous years!! horray!</p>
<p>Yeah, it really is a lot better. One of my friends is now at McGill in Montreal, and he said that he had a lot of trouble catching up with his calculus courses because the Ontario curriculum wasn’t very strong. I’m hoping it will get much much better with the new addition. </p>
<p>They probably didn’t even mention vectors in the old class, but now they’re even in the title, so it should be good. Good luck!!</p>
<p>I think I heard they switched the math curriculum in Ontario, so it would better prepare students in their transition from grade 12 to first year university.</p>
<p>What I’m surprised is that the Ontario education system classifies an “A” an 80 or above (at least in public schools). How EZ could that be??</p>
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<p>It could be fairly difficult actually, depending on the grade inflation in your school.</p>
<p>Yeah American highschools an A is 90 and above but people routinely get 95% and 100% – pretty ridiculous actually. A friend of mine even went to the University of Arizona on exchange, took all 4th year classes and got an average of over 100%. And he’s not a superstar by any stretch of the imagination. He and I have the same decent-but-not-amazing grades at our home uni.</p>
<p>Getting rid of Calculus is a HUGE mistake. Its better if they offer advanced calculus as an option because students are going to be in for a nasty shock when they get to University.</p>
<p>I remember in my first year calc, most of the students coming from Ontario ahd a problem with Calc, not only because htey weren’t familiar with the topics, but half the class who was international esp from Indian and Chinese curriculum had this in Gr 11 and 12 resulting in a the curve tending towards the higher side.</p>
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An A is 80 or above in Alberta too, but Alberta also has provincial exams that are worth 50% of the final mark in most grade 12 classes.</p>
<p>Exactly the reason why I left Toronto…</p>
<p>What most people in the US don’t realize is that high school students in Canada aren’t subject to grade inflation, or any of that crap. Also, there is no such thing as a 100%. The highest mark teachers in the province are allowed to award is a 98, which, rest assured, is EXTREMELY difficult to get. When averages are calculated, virtually no one has an average that is above 90%. Those who do are usually only 1-2% over it. In my entire high school carreer, I have never had a test that was more than 10% multiple choice.</p>
<p>rockermcr: Speaking as a student in Ontario, that’s a load of patent bull. You may have gotten that impression, but I know an absurd amount of people with averages easily over 90%, and given that the entrance average cutoffs for many top programs are 90%+, your statement more or less just isn’t right.</p>
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<p>This is not exactly true. As I’ve stated before, a lot of private schools in Canada enjoy massive grade inflation in their curricula. What may seem like an 92% effort at one school could equate to an easy 100 at another. Search wutangfinancial’s posts about under-prepared private school kids matriculating to McGill, and then proceeding to do horribly in university. He’s also stated that “Toronto public school kids” have it “pretty badly.” I tend to agree with him. If there’s any group of kids that have the raw deal, it’s the majority of public school kids in Ontario.</p>
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<p>I have had several 100s during my time at an Ontario private school which rest assured, had its fair share of U.S. college admits (although, not “Ivy League good” colleges). The highest grade I ever made in my Ontario public school was a 99 which, while still really good, was due to strict examination procedures that emphasized perfectionism instead of actual competence. Not to mention, the courses in the Ontario curriculum are supposed to be at a pathetically low level of content. I’ve personally never seen a 100 in the public school system. I know they exist though.</p>
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<p>This is also fairly true. You are just not going to expect most people to make averages above 90, but from my experience at a public school, the strongest students generally all cluster in the low 90’s with the exceptional few <em>cough</em> <em>cough</em> with averages closing in on 100. Now this is clearly a result of some sort of grade deflation, since even at several competitive U.S. high schools I know of, the strongest students make at least averages about 95 or 96, with an average of 93 and below not actually difficult to obtain.</p>
<p>What all of this results to is that several people will get into university programs that they shouldn’t have been accepted to, and others just have a rotten egg. wutangfinancial has lamented all too well on the “dumbasses” from McGill.</p>