<p>My daughter’s high school has added AP Calculus BC for next year, but requires AP Calculus AB as a prerequisite. They have block scheduling, thus BC would be in the spring. They claim to follow the collegeboard’s outline for class content, but when I looked that up, it appears to be the same course, but with additional material in the BC course. I’m curious how other schools handle AP Calculus. My daughter is a sophomore and would need to take Honors Pre-Calc in the fall. I’m wondering if she could go right into BC for the spring semester. She’s had excellent grades and did extremely well on her PSATs this past fall and has yet to feel challenged in any math course. Would colleges look upon it as redundant to take both AB and BC or is that standard procedure?</p>
<p>If the school is requiring AB as a prerequisite for BC, that probably means that they intend to teach only the BC-specific topics in the second course. In that case, a student who had not taken AB first would be hopelessly lost.</p>
<p>Some school systems do it that way; others offer AB or BC as alternatives. In that case, the BC course covers all the AB topics plus the BC-specific topics, and it is paced much faster than the AB course.</p>
<p>If your child feels strongly about bypassing AB, have you had a chance to have your child talk to their math teacher and/or gc about bypassing AB? My D attends a large PHS, and they did have that option, and she took it. It made for lots of HARD work, as the pace was FAST, but she liked the challenge.</p>
<p>It’s sort of like this- AB and BC are both college calculus. If AB goes through chapter 6 of the book, BC goes through chapter 10.</p>
<p>My son took AB, which was a big mistake. It was really easy for him, and he should have taken BC. He easily made high As and 100’s on the tests, 5 on the AP exam. He had a pre-calc teacher the year before who gave a few non-math assignments, extra credit (what… extra credit? We don’t do no stinkin’ extra credit!), notebook checks, which he didn’t do well on (see the thread in Parent Cafe on 3rd Grade math), and ended up squeaking by with an A-minus, barely. So AB Calc was where he was put. If you’re daughter LIKES math, and is good at math, take AB/BC is my recommendation. Also- you might ask, if she starts out on the BC path and it proves to be too much, can she get out of it and go down to AB?</p>
<p>Our high school is one that offers AB or BC, with BC covering all the AB topics. The BC course moves extremely fast…please be forewarned. My d who had made easy As in all of her previous math classes, struggled to maintain a B in BC. It may have been the instruction, but I suspect it was pace (and the four other APs and zero hour class in her schedule) that was the problem. Also, not sure if this is a universal rule, but there was a deadline for dropping from BC to AB a few weeks after the course began. At her school, it was a year long course so there was no option to switch after the fall semester either. </p>
<p>After hearing of all her friends’ easy As in AB, she sincerely regretted not switching to AB. Future math, engineering majors, or students who are good self-teachers who can handle the pace will undoubtedly want to take BC. Given her college/career goals, my d would have been fine with AB.</p>
<p>Also, consider what else your child will be taking. ldgirl was in AP Chem, Honors Anatomy & Physiology, plus three other APs in addition to AP Calc BC…and she was a yearbook editor. It was TOO much.</p>
<p>I also think calculus is developmental. I thought it was hard at 16. Took three years off from math and thought it was easy at 19.</p>
<p>But to your question if the BC course starts where AB leaves off you are probably out of luck.</p>
<p>Doubleplay starting in about pre-calc Mathson’s teachers stopped looking at homework. They felt that it was up to you to figure out if you needed to do it all or not.</p>
<p>I’ll have to check with her guidance counselor but it looks like it’s set up as a sequence, which would mean waiting til senior year. I take it colleges won’t think it’s odd if she takes AB and BC? It seems somewhat redundant to me. Perhaps they ought to call it a year long course and name it AP Calc ABC. </p>
<p>It’s very hard to accelerate at her school because there are few students in the honors/AP classes so they typically have only one or two sections and scheduling becomes a real issue. She’s thinking of math as a major. She’s always gotten great feedback from her math teachers, virtually perfect grades, etc., but I’m concerned that in the great admissions game she may be behind where other kids are in coursework.</p>
<p>Interesting. Jr’s school has a 2-year AB/BC progression with no overlap. Jr thinks it’s easy, but he always thinks math is easy. They skipped him out of pre-calc into Calc AB about four weeks into the year last year. He emphatically says that BC does not repeat AB in his school. FWIW. You probably need to ask the school.</p>
<p>(He should have been in Calc AB in 10th grade, but that is another story about our school district…)</p>
<p>My son’s school math sequence was precalc then AP Calc. The AP course was a year long (also on block schedule here). Basically they did AB work the first semester and BC work 2nd semester. Some kids just took the first semester and if didn’t do well, opted out of BC. No one could come in for just the BC work semester.</p>
<p>Mom of four (me too, all within 5 years): D just signed up for AB next year, which is all that is offered (we’re hoping they add BC next year), but AB would still be a pre-req at her HS. Sons are at the Governor’s school where they had a choice between AB or BC. BC is for the highly gifted math kids. My boys had no problem with it (and would have been bored at a slower pace), but even at their level a number of the kids who thought they could handle BC wound up changing to AB. The school profile should show what’s offered and the colleges will know if AB is a pre-req for BC or not. Both schools have our version of block scheduling, which is classes every other day, but all calculus classes are full year. I never quite understood how fall/spring blocks manage AP exams…</p>
<p>My D’s school also didn’t have very many students at the high end so there were problems with them offering some classes altogether. They only offered an AB class and no BC. She did quite well in the class so she ended up taking the calc BC AP test anyway and passed it despite not having had a calc BC course. If it was offered though, she would have taken it.</p>
<p>S took AB calc. as a Jr. Made a B in the class and 4 on the exam. Did not take BC, opted for AP stats for Sr. year. Went to our big state U, started in Calc. 1 as a refresher course since he had not had Calc. since jr. year, got a foreign grad. student teacher, couldn’t understand a word he was saying,dropped the class (already had AP credit anyway). He took Calc.2 (for engineering majors) in the spring semester and got a B. This class was also taught by a grad. student but he was really good. Synopsis…AB CAlc. as h.s. jr. got a B (4 exam), year and half later (with no calc. in between) took Calc. 2 and got a B and was very happy…no more Calc. for S!</p>
<p>My sons’ school sounds like what Washdad described. Older son took an honors pre-calculus class in junior year (also took Calc AB AP exam) and then took BC calc senior year. I think AP Calc AB was also an option, and I don’t think there was much overlap in the two years. S2 is taking AB Calc this year and will take BC calc next year. I think they just renamed the honors precalc course to “AP Calculus AB” since they did cover the material. At his school, the kids really do have to take AB before they take BC – it’s just how the material is structured. I think they go pretty far in BC calc, probably beyond what the college board requires, so skipping AB calculus would not work.</p>
<p>MomofFour:</p>
<p>Some schools have BC or AB and some have BC after AB. You are right that BC is only some additional chapters (about 1/3 more). Since your child is on block schedule, it might be a very good idea for him to take AB in the fall then BC in the spring. This way, the BC material will still be fresh in his mind by the time of the AP exam. Our school has block scheduling, with BC or AB in the fall. There’s a problem with getting students to review the materials before the exam in May.
The BC exam will have an AB subscore, showing how well the student did on the materials covered in the AB class.</p>
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<p>Our school goes beyond what’s on the AP too, because there’s a month and a half of school left after they take the exam. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>mathmom:</p>
<p>Do most students in your school take the AP as juniors? In my S’s school, seniors graduate in early June, so there’s only a couple of weeks after the AP exams and they’re taken up by finals and perhaps a project.</p>
<p>According to a friend of mine whose son is at a “block scheduling school”, this “AB fall BC spring” methodology is actually a way for the school to take the equivalent of two years to cover what should be a one year course. By offering it as two courses, the school claims it’s a “win win” - the school gets additional time to cover the course, the kids get an additional quality point class to boost their GPA and don’t complain.</p>
<p>In reality, the best math students are hurt by “gaming the system”. They are incredibly bored by the slow pace of the course and they miss the opportunity to take other advanced courses.</p>
<p>Reflectivemom, I’m sure it’s a function of how the courses are taught. I’m not the math person in the family, but this is my second child going through the AB – BC sequence, and neither one seemed bored. Their school is quite challenging, and I’m sure (based on H’s input) that they really cover the material in depth. As I mentioned on a different thread, many of the BC Calc kids also take AP physics, and the classes are back-to-back in the same room with the same teacher. So they have an hour and a half of math/physics with an outstanding teacher. I don’t see the benefit of rushing through any AP course just to boost GPA. Our older son is a physics major in college, and those classes are HARD!!! I think it’s always possible to explore a topic in more depth.</p>
<p>D’s hs offered Pre-Calc/CalcA junior year with senior year options of either CalcAB or CalcBC, the former being for students who felt shaky after the Pre-Calc/CalcA class.</p>
<p>There was an irony in that beginning the Pre-Calc/CalcA class, D intended to take only one more math class ever except for stats, the following year’s BC class. After the CalcBC class, she decided to become a math major.</p>
<p>sjmom,</p>
<p>I’m all for students taking their time - if they need to do so. But, that is the reason there are two levels of Calculus. There is AB, which covers less and moves more slowly and BC which covers a few more chapters, I believe, and moves more rapidly. The kids who take the BC Calc exam cover the AB material plus some. The AP Calc BC exam actually has an AB subscore. </p>
<p>Do the BC kids actually repeat the entire AB component again spring semester? Or conversely, do the kids who only take the BC semester skip the first 4/5’s of the course? Or is it that the teacher moves very slowly through the BC curriculum over the year - at one/half the rate of most schools?</p>