Reply to AP Calculus - AB or BC

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "AP Calculus - AB or BC - Which to Take?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]He doesn't need classes higher than BC for admissions to engineering.

I also thought the AB/BC sequence was weird when it was recommended for my son, a very strong math student. But he took the math teacher's advice and did that. As I understand it, the way APS teaches it,  BC class blows through the review of AB concepts really quickly to get to new material. Also, keep in mind he'll likely have other challenging classes too. Junior year is hard. A slightly easier math class, and then more review early in senior year while in the midst of applications can be a better balance.

You will get a more solid understanding of calculus doing the sequence. And that is far more important going into a math heavy major. With 5s on the AB and BC tests, DS skipped Calc 1 at VT but took Calc 2 in college for review and to be sure he understood it the way VT teaches it. Got an A (and As in the subsequent math classes) while many students struggled. Don't rush through math classes.[/quote]

Thank you.  This is very helpful feedback and advice.  We had heard that you need to take the highest level math sequence available at your school for the competitive engineering programs (which, at APS, is MV/Linear Alegebra), but you make very good points.  The reason I think he is even remotely struggling with this decision is because, in our experience, APS routinely directs students to easier routes/pathways versus the more challenging routes/pathways.  For example, after taking Algebra 2 in 9th grade and getting a very high A, his teacher/counselor recommended that he take Algebra 3 instead of Pre-calc in 10th grade!  I told him to ignore his teacher/counselor and sign up for Pre-Calc because their advice was absurd.  This was obviously the right decision.  He would have been bored to tears in Algebra 3.  APS also discouraged him from taking too many higher-level courses/APs his sophomore year but he took them anyway and knocked it out of the park.  Junior year will definitely be harder but he has the bandwidth for more work.  He did not feel like he had to work very hard this year.    [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics