AP Calculus AB
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Anonymous
| If AP Calculus AB is the highest math my DC reaches, will they be auto rejected from T15 as a biology/chemistry/neuroscience major? DC attends competitive public in over-represented area with most classmates reaching BC calc or higher. |
Anonymous
| No. Most colleges state that they will not penalize a student for not taking a class that their high school does not offer. |
Anonymous
| Apologies for previous answer - misunderstood the question (reaches vs offered). Doubtful your student will be penalized only for AB, but not as clear cut as if the school simply doesn't offer it. |
Anonymous
| The problem is that your student will be compared to the other students at his hs. To get into a t15, class rank has to be in top 5%. The difference won't come down to who is in BC or AB |
Anonymous
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Unfortunately, there's no reliable information out there about auto-rejection for something like that.
The best you can expect from boards like this are posts like, "My kid only took Calc AB and, yes, they got into Schools X, Y, and Z." My recommendation is that you look very closely at results from your own high school. Focus on the past three years. It's rather painstaking work, in my experience. Naviance obviously won't help much because it doesn't provide the indended major or the kids' courses. (Also, it doesn't tell you if the kids were hooked, which is the most important information of all . . . . ) We've figured things like this out via word-of-mouth. Started with our high school's "admits" page on IG, where the kids tend to post where they will be going to college. This can be helpful in some ways because it helps us know who to ask for insight and advice. (In our experience, parents of kids a year or two ahead of ours have been incredibly kind and generous with information and advice. We play to pay it forward for the years behind us, of course!) But again, the admits page on IG is limited to the one school a kid chooses to attend. When asking around, it's helpful to ask about the other schools they applied to, as well. Once you speak with enough families, sometimes you'll see a pattern - Cornell tends to accept STEM kids who stop at CalcAB but Brown tends to deny STEM kids who don't take BC or MVC. (Those are random examples, not based on anything specific.) And again, so much of this is specific to YOUR DC'S SCHOOL. College tend to compare applicants to their peers, both the year they apply and from recent years past. It's VERY difficult to read the tea leaves and predict these things. My advice is to encourage your kid to apply widely, and to fall in love with at least two "safety schools" you know they would love. This is not because they took CalcAB instead of BC. It's because the T15 schools are all a crapshoot, even for the most qualified kids. |
Anonymous
| Your school's counselors also have access to the granular information that is not shared in Naviance/Scoir. Your child can ask for more detail during a meeting, or over email: "Based on my research on Naviance, it looks like 6 kids have gotten into Cornell in the past 3 years. When you have a chance, can you tell me if any of them didn't have BC Calc? I want to make sure I am being realistic with my college list." |
Anonymous
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So happy my DS's school doesn't offer the higher version! This level is challenging enough for him with everything else he has going on.
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Anonymous
Life sciences majors like biology and neuroscience usually do one semester calculus for life sciences which is very close to Calculus AB. Chemistry majors require the full two semesters of Calculus, akin to BC. This being said, I don’t think colleges discriminate between the versions of calculus taken in high school for admissions purposes, especially if she entered high school with geometry in 9th. Calculus AB is roughly 80% the BC material. Why is she not taking BC instead? Is it because the school has AB as prerequisite for BC, scheduling conflict issue, or she’s not confident in her abilities? If she’ll do well in AB she’ll do well in BC as well with a little more effort. It’s a good idea to explain on the application her high school course choices. Just make sure the school doesn’t treat them differently as in not giving the most rigorous mark to AB students, so you need to talk to the counselor directly. If she took AP Biology, Chemistry and Physics, has the gpa and extracurriculars she’ll be competitive to Top 15, but be aware admissions are a lottery at these schools. She won’t be on auto reject because she got an A in Calculus AB. |
Anonymous
Most private schools require AB before BC. So she probably didn’t “chose” AB, she just entered high school taking Geometry in 9th grade! |
Anonymous
Auto-reject, no. That 'most' classmates reach BC or higher could play a factor in rigor perception, I would think. If AB is required before BC, then that would be a function of math tracking earlier on and might factor in differently than if students can choose to go AB or BC and most choose BC. In that I would think it possible those students get a 'bump' in rigor perception'. I think the 'risk' is more that other students get a 'lift' versus your DC gets a 'demerit'. Kinda like test optional. They say not sending in a test score won't hurt you, but that doesnt mean it doesn't help the student that sends it in. That said there are essays, recs, ECs, all the other classes taken, etc that factor in. It doesn't hinge on a single class taken/not taken but it is a game of inches. |
Anonymous
| Yes, they will be penalized for college admissions, since they will be compared to peers in the same high school who went further. But they can still get all the degrees and become scientists, OP! So think long-term, not short-term. |
Anonymous
| The answer to the question is No. |
Anonymous
Thank you to all who responded for helpful insights and advice. DD has excellent grades and rigor (just not in math) in her school but is not taking BC because of a health issue/medical treatment this semester and was advised to take a “balanced” senior course load. DD taking 5 other AP courses on top of calculus (to try to be as competitive with peers). Just very worried because 85% of her class probably finishes HS with BC calc or higher. Not sure if will get the highest rigor mark by counselor because of this. |
Anonymous
Mostly this. In the game of inches the difference between calculus AB and BC is maybe a quarter of an inch. OP is agonizing over things that matter only a little. I haven’t seen a single college website that suggests BC is better for admissions, even if it covers two additional chapters. The admission outcome will not rest on doing parametric curves and series in the senior year of high school. Instead of worrying about this, have your daughter go to Red Cross this weekend and take a first aid class and certification to list as an extracurricular on the application if she’s interested. It’s going to count more than AB vs BC. |
Anonymous
What the college website says is irrelevant. Your application is judged against your peers and the other applications they receive. Only going up to calc AB (and senior yr at that) and trying to get a spot at a top school for stem is likely not going to be in your favor. While it isn’t an automatic no, you aren’t going to have a grade in the class nor and AP score when your application is being considered. In a sea of applicants that all have calc BC or beyond, many of them before senior year, your application is going to be put aside |