College Sophomore struggling with Calc 2

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes - the college has peer tutoring. He has tried that but it's hit and miss. Will tell him to keep trying and also considering an outside tutor for a boost of confidence.

OP as one who had a DS in the same situation last year- right down to the rigorous private and the doing OK in calculus 1- I will add this.

Your support for an outside tutor is great. Tell him you will pay for it so he has no excuse. But do not under any circumstances let him whine too much about this and do not let him drop the class. Unless you want to teach him to turn tail the minute things get “hard” in life.

Maybe he just isn’t cut out for pre-med? If he can’t get through Calc2, it is hard to see that he’ll be able to handle Organic Chem at some point.

Another false! Calculus and OChem require different skills. It's highly likely one is good at OChem but only average at Calculus.

But the sad truth is that he will be competing for med school spots with kids who took the equivalent class in high school. Even at our mid-level public school there are multiple students every year who take the equivalent class as a freshman and score a 5 on the AP exam. There's an entire section who are taking it as juniors. I truly hope the best for this kid, but reality is reality

Ideally it should be planned out this way. DC took all hard courses including Ochem and multivariable in senior year hgih school. What I were correcting is your logic being wrong. OChem and Calculus use very different skills. So it's just false to say one is average at Calculus is necessarily bad at OChem. That's just not the case. Were you even a stem major? Advanced degree? Why giving out this kind of false information here?

[Anonymous]

In the history of humankind, there has never been an easier time to learn something than right now. Tell your kid to go on ChatGPT, input the test questions and ask it to explain the answers to him. Ask it to identify themes he is missing, ask if there's any fundamental holes in his math knowledge base.

If he is not interested in improving at this, I would be worried about his drive and capability to be a doctor. Great doctors will learn stuff that is hard, and sometimes uninteresting, their entire career. Why does he want to be a doctor? Perhaps he anchored on the idea early on, and now he's realizing a STEM career is not for him.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes - the college has peer tutoring. He has tried that but it's hit and miss. Will tell him to keep trying and also considering an outside tutor for a boost of confidence.

My student is a math major and a TA. In addition to hit/miss peer tutoring, see if your student can schedule weekly or twice weekly sessions with the "hit" tutors. Go to office hours each week. Ask the professor if there are math/other STEM majors on campus they would recommend for private 1:1 tutoring at the library or elsewhere in person on the campus. My student offers office hours and weekly optional review sessions. (it will not get easier in Calc 3 and beyond, so I do not recommend the community college route.) Good luck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My kid is at a top LAC and is struggling with Calc 2 (he already did Calc 1 last semester and did ok). He had a bumpy first semester as a freshman and is now stressed out about this semester because of Calc 2. He is talking about transferring as he feels like he does not belong in the college academically (socially happy). He came from a rigorous private and did well, although always weaker in math but made it through to Calc and did fine. Plenty of APs with good grades. We were surprised at how much he struggled first semester at college. He wants to do sciences/pre med so is required to take Calc 2 for this course. Any advice?

1) If he is still serious about sciences/pre med, hire a private tutor
2) let him hire the tutor
3) if he doesn't follow through with that, then he doesn't have what it takes to be pre-med, which is FINE!. Calc is supposed to be a weed out. My own kid gave up aerospace engineering at the Calc 3 point and switched to humanities. He is now at Harvard Law.
4) This is a normal part of the sciences/pre-med weed-out. Support your son and explain this to him but let him decide if he's going to continue with this major.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My kid is at a top LAC and is struggling with Calc 2 (he already did Calc 1 last semester and did ok). He had a bumpy first semester as a freshman and is now stressed out about this semester because of Calc 2. He is talking about transferring as he feels like he does not belong in the college academically (socially happy). He came from a rigorous private and did well, although always weaker in math but made it through to Calc and did fine. Plenty of APs with good grades. We were surprised at how much he struggled first semester at college. He wants to do sciences/pre med so is required to take Calc 2 for this course. Any advice?

Tell him to buck up and grow up. Seriously. If he wants to do pre-med, this is nothing.

His "rigorous private" likely coddled him through the tough classes. I'm sorry, OP, but that's how it works. I've had 2 go through a rigorous private as well, and that was definitely the case. Then they get to college and - surprise! - the work is really hard.

Perhaps some of the time that he is spending being "socially happy" would be better spent with a tutor, or a peer study group, or working his tail off on his own to get through Calc 2. I know. It's hard. But so what? So is life.

+1

This 100% this

Ok, my kid went to a rigorous private (like an actually rigorous one that was miserable for 4 years) and is finding STEM classes at a top20 to be a joke.
She has a 100% in all classes, including ones where the average on first assessments was a 20% or 40%.

Just had to say that.

OP, you need to hire a tutor on Wyzant. This is what we did when things got bad in high school.

My DS did this when he was struggling in AP Calculus in high school as well. A good tutor can give your son some confidence, and it builds mandatory study time into his schedule. Personality fit is important in addition to knowledge, kids learn well from some people, not so well from others.

[Anonymous]

Thanks for all of the advice. Very helpful and similar to what I have been telling him to do which is reassuring!

[Anonymous]

Seek help from math department, get extra problems from prof, get a tutor, do LOTS of problems for practice.

These are all basic steps for math support. Get multiple "sources" for being "taught" the material and do lots of problems.

Also consider following the same topic in an online course - does Khan Academy have Calc 2?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes - the college has peer tutoring. He has tried that but it's hit and miss. Will tell him to keep trying and also considering an outside tutor for a boost of confidence.

My student is a math major and a TA. In addition to hit/miss peer tutoring, see if your student can schedule weekly or twice weekly sessions with the "hit" tutors. Go to office hours each week. Ask the professor if there are math/other STEM majors on campus they would recommend for private 1:1 tutoring at the library or elsewhere in person on the campus. My student offers office hours and weekly optional review sessions. (it will not get easier in Calc 3 and beyond, so I do not recommend the community college route.) Good luck.

I agree with everyone you said. But I don't think a premed student needs to take math beyond Calc 2, especially if they are not interested in math. They just have to get through Calc 2 unscathed!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Tell him to use AI!!!!

I’m not sure how the PP meant this, but I’ve used ChatGPT extensively to learn statistics, some calculus that I’d forgotten, and discrete math that I need for work. Also data structures and algorithms.

I take screenshots or copy paste from textbooks and ask for explanations. I then drill down on specific concepts I’m weak on. To me, this is the best way to use ChatGPT.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Tell him to use AI!!!!

I’m not sure how the PP meant this, but I’ve used ChatGPT extensively to learn statistics, some calculus that I’d forgotten, and discrete math that I need for work. Also data structures and algorithms.

I take screenshots or copy paste from textbooks and ask for explanations. I then drill down on specific concepts I’m weak on. To me, this is the best way to use ChatGPT.

This works for fill in but not real teaching. You can get online tutors for under $20 an hour.

[Anonymous]

if you know DC is not a math genius or particularly interested in math, good way to avoid college Calculus is to get AP Cal BC test score 5 in high school. Get it done in high school, almost all colleges allow transfer of two AP credits. College Calculus is waived.

Then they can take statistics as the math course for premed programs. A smooth ride through the premed journey.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:if you know DC is not a math genius or particularly interested in math, good way to avoid college Calculus is to get AP Cal BC test score 5 in high school. Get it done in high school, almost all colleges allow transfer of two AP credits. College Calculus is waived.

Then they can take statistics as the math course for premed programs. A smooth ride through the premed journey.

+1 especially if you know the particular college is on the more rigorous side

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Calc 2 is likely easier at a community college. He could consider dropping it this semester and taking it over the summer.

this is what everyone at Michigan does.

[Anonymous]

Take call 2 at community college over summer. The credits will transfer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yes - the college has peer tutoring. He has tried that but it's hit and miss. Will tell him to keep trying and also considering an outside tutor for a boost of confidence.

OP as one who had a DS in the same situation last year- right down to the rigorous private and the doing OK in calculus 1- I will add this.

Your support for an outside tutor is great. Tell him you will pay for it so he has no excuse. But do not under any circumstances let him whine too much about this and do not let him drop the class. Unless you want to teach him to turn tail the minute things get “hard” in life.

Maybe he just isn’t cut out for pre-med? If he can’t get through Calc2, it is hard to see that he’ll be able to handle Organic Chem at some point.

If he cannot get a B- or above in calc 2, he will not get through premed. B- is well below average these days. It is not like the 80s when C- was well below but C+ was just below the mean and B- was the mean.
OP what were his AP scores in math and science? SAT?
Premed coursework and mcat correlate with AP and SAT more than with HS GPA. Most HS inflate a lot, with well over half getting A-/A in classes. Some privates do this. The fact that he had calc in high school and is struggling this much is concerning.