Is Pre-Calc Enough?
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Anonymous
| The kids I've known that were accepted to top 20 schools (not for sports) had calculus or beyond. The girls, in particular, who stopped at pre-calc did not do as well. All anecdotal evidence but the colleges are quite clear that they want the most rigorous courses. |
Anonymous
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Colleges don't say take the most difficult classes that are available to you in HS. They say take the most challenging courses you're capable of in the field(s) you're most interested in. Basically, show us YOUR best stuff and how you're working to make that better (which could involve pushing yourself outside the classroom).
(The "available at your HS" language is out there to reassure kids that if their HS doesn't offer IB or every AP under the sun they aren't being aced out of elite college admissions by kids who went to a school that does. The point is not that if your HS offers 18 APs you should/must take them all to be competitive.) And wrt calculus specifically,some of the most selective schools encourage most STEM kids who got 5s on the AP exam to retake intro Calculus (in an accelerated honors track) freshman year of college. AP Calc is useful for getting non-STEM kids out of college math requirements, but it's generally not the best foundation for future study of mathematics. |
Anonymous
That means 90% aren't math majors, and yet the average math SAT score is comparable to reading and writing/language. |
Anonymous
DC also got a 32 ACT and is a senior taking AP Statistics and Calculus. If that isn't enough for a college, screw 'em. Plenty excellent colleges out there where DC will be welcomed. |
Anonymous
| None of the elite colleges (Ivies, Stanford) require students who are clearly arts/humanities majors to take calculus. If you state your interest in a STEM field, they expect calculus and lots of AP science on the transcript. However, those students aren't expected to have lots of advanced literature classes. So an arts/humanities student will have higher expectations on their essay and classes beyond AP English plus editing the school literary journal and exceptional recs from art/humanities teachers. |
Anonymous
| NO. You need to finish calculus by end of junior year (or summer) so it is on your transcript for fall EA/ED/SCEA applications. If you are really aiming for top 30 I would suggest also taking college courses in advanced math at NOVA or GMU or local college. DD did that, got an A and I think that marked her as a serious student plus she got full credits and an A entering University. Finally, you should take the SAT II subject matter tests in Math I and Math II. These are unforgiving tests and take a lot of preparation. |
Anonymous
Colleges don't accept or reject you based on your presumed major. |
Anonymous
What elite university transfers a letter grade from a community college course to your undergrad transcript? The SAT II Math 2 test doesn't go beyond pre-Calc -- and schools that require/request SAT IIs generally don't want you to submit scores from both Math 1 and Math 2. The material has significant overlap. |
Anonymous
Why do you swear about a learning disability? Google it if you don't know. Your ignorance is telling. I hope you are more understanding in real life. |
Anonymous
I'm guessing the reason they didn't do well had to do with something other than calculus. Unless you're a STEM major, most colleges DO NOT CARE. I think it shows more self-knowledge for the average kid to get to upper level math and say, I don't get this, I don't want to get this and I don't see the relevance this math will have in my life so I'm going to focus my limited energies elsewhere. By the time you get to Calculus you have taken all the math you need. And as another poster noted, many colleges require you to take or retake Calculus freshman year. |
Anonymous
Maybe. My DC is a candidate for top 30 universities, as determined by the college counselor, not us. DC is also interested in the humanities but still has a math SAT over 750. Because of the innate math ability DC was placed in the higher math track early on and will complete an advanced calculus class this year. Probably a lot of students who are not good at math or don't like it enough to take the challenging classes, also do not have high SAT scores in math, even though the SAT doesn't cover calculus. I'm sure there are exceptions -- kids that stop at pre-calc but still rock the SAT math section, but probably not as many of them. |
Anonymous
| SAT math maxes out at Algebra 2/basic trig. |
Anonymous
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Just a decade ago, my best friend got into Cornell, Northwestern, and Hopkins with precalc only. We were in a top school district that offered math up to multivariable calculus, but she hadn't tested well back in middle school when math tracking decisions were made. She was a good student, and the fact that she hadn't taken the most rigorous math sequence was overlooked because she otherwise had good test scores, grades, and class rank. People who were truly competitive for Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, MIT, etc. took all the most rigorous courses, but there was some more flexibility the next tier down.
Of course things have changed since the mid-2000s, but has it really changed THAT much??? |
Anonymous
This is what my dc is thinking of doing because she is on track to take Cal in her Sr year. But can you really cram Calculus into a summer at NOVA? Would you be taking 2 summer sessions that last the entire summer? That would pretty much leave her with no time to do anything else the whole summer. When did your dd take the advance math course? |
Anonymous
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Then she'll retake have to retake Calc the next year in college because a summer school community college course in Calc is not going to cut it if she gets in to an elite U and plans to do anything that involves math. So if she does get in, she's PO'd you made her spend the previous summer doing this. And if she doesn't get in to an elite I, she's PO'd because you made her do this.
It's fine for her to take Calc in HS her Sr year. None of the standardized tests used for admissions involve any Calc. No elite university requires Calc for admission (much less anything beyond Calc). |