Our school offers AP Calc AB and Calc CD as separate years. My son’s track has him in AB senior year; he is a strong math student but prefers sciences and plans to study chemistry in college. He has straight A’s and on track for 8 APs.
He’d have to take pre-calc at a community college during the summer to jump tracks to get to CD senior year. His college ambitions are quite high on the prestige track and he has been counseled he should do this by other adults.
I am not asking if his desire to be admitted to a prestigious college is a good one – (in fact I am counseling him against focusing on that). I am interested solely in opinions of the degree of detriment of having Calc AB vs CD as the highest math on his application for prestigious schools. I know having CD would be “better” for him – so I guess I am just asking if only having AB is much of a detriment and how others have fared with that condition. I just want him to have all the information to make the right decision before he jams up his summer with schoolwork, and your experienced opinions will be helpful with that.
Thanks in advance!
You mean Calc AB and BC? I’m not aware of Calc CD.
I don’t think AB only would hurt him much, even with chem as a major, but since it does have a lot of math in it it might help to have it.
^^Actually no, his school teaches it Calculus C/D, to be taken after AP Calculus AB:
MODERATOR’S NOTE:
Deleted out course description. Long story short, this class prepares students for the Calc BC exam and has AB as a prereq.
So essentially it is the BC curriculum with a different name, seeing that the students will be taking the BC exam. I’m in BC and I think I learned all those things except maybe one or two that your school does because it chooses so… To answer your question, even for a STEM major, it wouldn’t hurt you in admissions if you had an A. My friend just got into JHU as a neuroscience major and she’s in AB.
Thanks for the clarification @ref1ections , and the positive news about your friend and JHU. Any other feedback is still very valuable.
Despite the impression that one gets from hanging out on College Confidential, calculus of any type is the accelerated math sequence. Even top rated STEM colleges like Harvey Mudd only requires some type of calculus.
FWIW, at my college. which is one of those <10% acceptance schools, the split between students who have had Calculus AB vs. Calculus BC is about 50/50. And there is a sizable minority that had no calculus at all. There are plenty of things to stress about in the admissions process; this is not one of them.
In addition, as noted above, I deleted the course description as it took google a nanosecond to pinpoint it to the HS in question, which sort of defeats the purpose of the “Confidential” part of this site’s name. 
No difference as long as he gets an A in it.
AB may be allowed advanced placement in math by one quarter to one semester. BC may be allowed advanced placement in math by two quarters to two semesters. (But no advanced placement at Caltech or Harvey Mudd, whose “calculus” courses are much more heavily proof-based than the usual college calculus courses.)
No college in the US that I know of requires high school student applicants to take calculus higher than AB level (Caltech and Harvey Mudd are two colleges that expect students to have calculus in high school, but they do not specify higher than AB level). It may be preferred by the most selective colleges to take a higher level if readily available to the student, but it does not seem to be all that readily available to your student.
My son took Calc AB as a senior in high school and currently attends Harvey Mudd. Your son should be fine.
(Re: " no advanced placement at Caltech or Harvey Mudd, " — true, Mudd doesn’t take AP results for credit, but a student can test out of some math—placement exams are given during orientation)
Sorry Moderator, carelessness on my part, won’t happen again.
Everyone else: thanks for that feedback! Just so you know your input has effect: I am going to recommend to him that he not put himself through the summer math class, and instead spend the time doing and studying the things he loves.
I’ll let you know if he takes my advice. 
Nice catch skieurope,
One of my kids skipped PreCalc entirely but I am not sure it was worth it for various reasons. Math in the US tends to be vertical whereas it is broader elsewhere. They need broad to solve problems. As long as pre-calc isn’t just review it can add breadth. But at a CC you are not as likely to get that breadth.
If your student is headed to a strong math/science curriculum, the math classes there will dispense with the content covered in high school AB and BC in a matter of a couple/few weeks. This is where the oft claim (on this site) that a class is a class is a class so community college is as good prep for upper level classes as is a good foundation at the university falls apart.
Math at a top STEM university will move rapidly. While intuitively it makes sense to have had as much exposure to higher level math as possible, things are not that simple. That is because there is often a lot of redundancy in US high school math classes because the student body is so heterogeneous. Sometimes very little is learned across an entire year. In top STEM colleges the students taking higher level math are more homogeneous so instructors can move faster but also instruct in a way that facilitates understanding for those with strong conceptual ability-not just facilitate a “5” on a test. So sometimes it is better to first get exposed to concepts when they can be taught by those who know them well-rare in high school. All this to say, there is probably nothing lost by not taking pre-calc at a community college in the summer. The kid I have at a top STEM school reports that it makes little difference whether students come in with AB or BC.
Care to name any such school other than possibly Caltech or Harvey Mudd? Lots of other schools have strong math departments, but accept high enough scores on AB or BC for advanced placement in math courses.
He’s likely fine with just AB. But it would be savvy to be involved also in math-sci activities. The bigger issue in highly selective admissions is kids who end at pre-calc when more was available. Partly because the competition is so fierce.