What are AP Courses like? and skipping precalc?

OP, why did you pose the question at all? It’s clear you have no interest in taking VERY knowledgeable posters advice.

With age comes the wisdom to listen to others who have been there, done that.

Going based on my experience and the experiences of others at my school, here is a rough list of the difficulties of some of the APs that you might be looking to take in your high school years:

Toughest:
Physics C, Chemistry

Tough:
Biology, CompSci A, World History

Decent:
English Language and Comp, Eng Lit and Comp, Economics (both macro and micro)

Easy:
Calculus AB, Calculus BC, Statistics, CompSci Principles, Psychology

Again, these are based on my experience (math comes easier to me than something like biology) and a few others so it’s probably very biased so just take it with a grain of salt. Have fun in high school! You’ll love it.

To reiterate with the others, yes pre-calc is an important fundamental class for higher level maths so it is important to have a solid understanding of the concepts in that class, as compared to something like geometry, which could be taken over the summer or testing-out of without much retribution.

nah bro I just haven’t learned some of the topics lol and it wouldnt take that long to either way

I’m not taking only @skieurope’s advice because its mostly just hypotheticals they think would happen which has no guarantee to benefit me in any way. I need something they experienced or stories of anyone else who had done this but when I asked him that he avoided the question

OP, the reason you are having trouble getting responses from people who have personal experience with skipped precalc is because it just isn’t done or advisable. I’m surprised your high school even allows it. The one my kids went to would never allow someone to enroll in calculus without taking precalc first.

Nah, it’s probably allowed you just have to ask your school counselors and say I’ll take it at a local community college and they’ll usually allow unless your school has some sort of barrier against that. They might say its not allowed but in reality it most likely is unless its a fundamental course like algebra 1

I didn’t avoid the question. I chose not to answer it. There’s a difference.

The reason I chose not to answer is twofold. One, you have clearly demonstrated zero open-to-listen. Two, I am not going to provide example of other students’ struggles on a site called College Confidential..

I was just trying to help you. Whether you believe me or not is no skin off my butt. Best of luck.

OP- take what you want. But don’t ask for advice and then criticize the posters who offer it.

If I had a buck for every HS kid I know who skipped a math class and then regretted it because they entered college with a shaky foundation- I guess I’d have 20 bucks. Yay! Starbucks for a week for me!

The world is filled with people who thought they were going to become (fill in the blanks) engineers, physicists, computer scientists, data scientists, epidemiologists. But that first C or D in college math (wherever they started) put those plans on hold-and they shifted to accounting or finance or psychology or urban planning- where they could get an A in the required math class based on what they already knew.

Go for it. You will be in very good company if you skip ahead!

lol the site name has nothing to do with the terms of service but ok @skieurope

next year bet 20 bucks ill get an A in Calc BC and a 5 on the ap test @blossom

Fantastic!

alrighty no going back. I’ll come back to this form around May 2022 when ap exams end for sophmore

@m8thical maybe just not ask for advice? And no one is interested in how you do in 2022. Come back in 2024-2025 and tell us how skipping a fundamental math course is working out in a math heavy STEM field.

Real world story. I asked the same question a year or so ago. Got the same advice. S ended up taking a 5 week Pre-Calc course over the summer at a local college. Then started Calc at same college that fall. Struggled mightily so got tutored by one of his hs math teachers. She finally told him to drop it. Said the summer Pre-Calc was just too short to cover all the topics and didn’t provide a strong enough foundation for Calc. So he didn’t even skip it and still had a hard time because it was a short summer class.

You have already received feedback based on direct experience and chosen to ignore it, along with all other input

To be blunt, further discussion on this topic is rather pointless. The advice is unanimous and OP clearly has interest in nothing but disagreeing with it.

Skip precalc. Then have fun in calculus.
You should also jump straight into Russian 2 and French 3. :smiley:

MODERATOR’S NOTE: Since the OP seems to not want to hear other people’s advice, I’m closing the thread.