precalc highest math in high school

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High schools really need to stop offering calc and pre-calc altogether.

I'm so confused by this. I thought all kids needed to take calc to get into the highest colleges and now people are saying pre-calc shouldn't even be a high school class?

Why take one anonymous comment so seriously?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:A friend's kid took precalc in 11th and AP Stats in 12th with no Calc. Accepted into the IRL school at Cornell. Large [underfunded] public school, no hooks.

DP: This was my kid, who got into every school they applied to (most selective had 20% acceptance rate). DCUM says taking Calc senior year is important, but my kids college counselor said AP Stats was a perfectly fine substitute for a humanities or social science major.

Stats might even be better for a humanities/social science major, since it's actually relevant to the fields.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School peer group matters. If you are applying to T50 schools and coming from a competetive high school where the majority of kids get to calculus, and your child will be one of the few kids not getting there it will be a disadvantage.

And this is why people say high schools should drop calc. The high school is handicapping students who could be successful applicants at elite colleges by putting them in a situation where they have to take calc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:School peer group matters. If you are applying to T50 schools and coming from a competetive high school where the majority of kids get to calculus, and your child will be one of the few kids not getting there it will be a disadvantage.

While this is true to a certain extent, if you have two 4.0 kids with high rigor and one is a talented humanities applicant without calculus, it’s up in the air who gets in.

I would say majority of top kids at our school take BC but mine didn’t. In early to HYP.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High schools really need to stop offering calc and pre-calc altogether.

I'm so confused by this. I thought all kids needed to take calc to get into the highest colleges and now people are saying pre-calc shouldn't even be a high school class?

No one needs to take math beyond what’s offered at their high school. This creates a perverse situation where it’s bad for the students if their high school offers more math. So the PP is saying that, given those perverse incentives, high schools that want to help their students with college admissions should offer less math.

(In reality, colleges seem to be solving this problem from their end by putting less emphasis on the math progression.)

Yes, this is what you see when you read college websites carefully. They distinguish math recommendations between engineering and humanities kids. It definitely was a risk and stressful to take the non Calc route but that was the right decision for our kid and it worked out.

[Anonymous]

Vast majority of kids getting accepted into top 20 colleges, maybe even top 50, will have taken calc AB by 12th grade- of any major. That doesn’t mean you cannot get in without it. But it is rare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:what will be the impact of this on collegest for a humanities or design major

No impact. My humanities major took Stats as their highest math and all was completely fine in college admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:High schools really need to stop offering calc and pre-calc altogether.

I'm so confused by this. I thought all kids needed to take calc to get into the highest colleges and now people are saying pre-calc shouldn't even be a high school class?

No one needs to take math beyond what’s offered at their high school. This creates a perverse situation where it’s bad for the students if their high school offers more math. So the PP is saying that, given those perverse incentives, high schools that want to help their students with college admissions should offer less math.

(In reality, colleges seem to be solving this problem from their end by putting less emphasis on the math progression.)

Yes, this is what you see when you read college websites carefully. They distinguish math recommendations between engineering and humanities kids. It definitely was a risk and stressful to take the non Calc route but that was the right decision for our kid and it worked out.

+100

[Anonymous]

So if a child doesn't make it to algebra in 8th grade and is instead in 8th grade math, in high school they do algebra 1, geometry, algebra II, and pre-calc, they'll be OK in admissions to selective schools for humanities? I doubt this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if a child doesn't make it to algebra in 8th grade and is instead in 8th grade math, in high school they do algebra 1, geometry, algebra II, and pre-calc, they'll be OK in admissions to selective schools for humanities? I doubt this.

It depends on the rest of their application. If you don't want to risk it then go through all the hoops to advance your kid's math track. Just know that if it's not the right track for them, then grades might suffer + more stress + less time to actually work on things that matters for admissions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if a child doesn't make it to algebra in 8th grade and is instead in 8th grade math, in high school they do algebra 1, geometry, algebra II, and pre-calc, they'll be OK in admissions to selective schools for humanities? I doubt this.

Flip it the other way. How many schools are going to reject a kid who scored 800 math just because his mom didn’t know to push him into the advanced math track in middle school? Zero.

Ironically, however, if your kid really can’t handle SAT math, the play is to take accelerated math courses at a grade-inflated high school and then apply test optional.

[Anonymous]

You need to think beyond your kid just getting into college but how prepared will they be once they get there if they only made it to precalc?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You need to think beyond your kid just getting into college but how prepared will they be once they get there if they only made it to precalc?

Prepared for what? These kids are not majoring in anything STEM related. All colleges that have a math requirement offer basic math courses for non-majors like clapping or astronomy, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So if a child doesn't make it to algebra in 8th grade and is instead in 8th grade math, in high school they do algebra 1, geometry, algebra II, and pre-calc, they'll be OK in admissions to selective schools for humanities? I doubt this.

Having precalc as your senior year math class is more limiting than taking precalc junior and then AP Stats senior year. Substituting AP Stats for AP Calc AB is really just substituting one AP math class for another, and for a lot of kids AP Stats is more relevant to their intended major (and hence its easy for college to understand why they opted for statistics over calculus). For example, if you are a psychology or political science major colleges require that you take at least one semester of statistics, however, calculus is frequently not required.