Hello! Super new to CC. I was planning to take Calc AB this year, but due to multiple scheduling conflicts I had to settle for honors instead. Course selections are coming up and I’m debating whether I should take BC or Stats.
Info: I’m planning to apply to competitive but not top schools (UIUC, OSU, Purdue, the like), I’m planning to major in Linguistics + Korean/Asian studies (depending on the school) so I’m not going into STEM
Which class is more likely to help my application?
Calc BC is more competitive than AP Stats.
BC impresses more - if LInguistics has a STEM dominance. For Asian studies, it won’t matter at the level of schools you mention.
All said, your math teacher needs to play a part.
Are they telling you that you are BC ready?
If your overall rigor is fine, I think while BC may be better it won’t likely turn the tables one way or another.
If your rigor is less than fine, could be different.
I know U of Hawaii has the Language Flagship in Korean - so check it out.
Indiana U and the excellent Hamilton Lugar school is a relatively easy in - and has the Institute for Korean Studies - so if looking at UIUC and Purdue, I’d definitely add IU to your list.
And AP Stats would be fine.
Check each school’s linguistics curriculums carefully.
Good luck.
Stats could be much more useful for linguistics research (depending on the kind of linguistics you’re interested in).
Agree with @worriedmomucb Professors look for research interns (even in H.S.), but MUST have taken stats to qualify. Also, a lot of majors require a 2nd semester stats based class (econ, psychology, etc). Understanding basic stats would set you up nicely. I would not recommend Stats over 1st semester Calc, but definitely over BC Calc. As a non-stem major, you will likely still need to take a math in college. I recommend starting with 1st semester Calc to maintain a competitive GPA.
It depends. As a non-STEM major, a strong AP score could fulfill a general studies math/quantitative requirement. It really depends on individual college policies (my daughter took care of her math requirement with her AP Stats score). So if you won’t have to take a lot of math for your major, you might check out the schools you’re considering and see what their policies are re: AP tests and placement/credit.
I agree with those who’ve advised that since you’ve had Calc already, Stats might actually be more helpful for humanities/social science majors.
I’d vote for Calc BC, assuming the Stats course is algebra based. It shows more rigor, and could come in handy depending upon what sort of linguistics you are interested in. My middle kid has a linguistics degree, and she is in a computational linguistics graduate program (she also has a math degree undergrad).
An introductory statistics course could be taken freshman year in college - I think you would find an introductory course to be pretty easy, given that there are typically all sorts of of non-math types in those courses.
If you aren’t going to be using calculus in real life, take stats!! It will actually be useful to you! And which math class you take will not be the one thing that gets you admitted or denied from a school.
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