Reply to Does taking AP Calc freshmen year in HS give enough "bonus" points to make it worth it?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]DC will be taking AP Calc as 9th grader.  They plans on taking AP stats at the high school, then continute to take higher math classes at the CC for 11th and 12th grade.  I remember seeing that 1/3 of Princeton students took a similar path.

The upside is hopefully stand out for top colleges.

The downside is taking classes off campus and not in high school enviroment.

Is the net result that a student stands out enough that it worth the detriment?[/quote]

This is ridiculous. Your DC is obviously very smart but this seems unnecessary. 
College acceptances are a crap shoot. Your kid could give up their lives to study and not get into any of their dream schools.
My point is only that kids should not make every decision in high school because they worry what colleges will think. Yes he should challenge himself but let him live a normal life.
Colleges won't necessarily think he's better than other applicants who tool AP Calc later on. Find a hook and develop that. Your DC academics are going to be great no matter what.[/quote]
Spot on.  My kid did took Calc BC in 10th and then advanced math classes because they love math.  Some sort of hook for college admissions was never a consideration.   And good thing since it certainly was no golden ticket.   The kid on the crew team got that.   [/quote]

Same for mine, but I think the post mvc classes did help her express her math interest to admissions,  since she didn't do competitions. She is a math major at a T10 now.[/quote]

Did your kid do any math major type math? Weird to want to be a math major but only do the school-standard engineering-style math in HS. [/quote]

?? Just because she didn't want to do competitions, she's "school standard?" 🙄 
She took mvc/diffeQ, linear, discrete and complex in HS.  Enough for you? Even if she didn't, you can pursue a math major from any tier. There's nothing that says you have to advance super early. But, in the case of mine, doing Calc in 10th allowed her to explore in 12th.

But, we've gotten away from OP's original question.  There's no reason to push for Calc in 9th. 10th gives a chance to dabble in classes like linear, 11th still allows for mvc, 12th is fine too.[/quote]

+1
The obsession of one poster with math competition is misguided.

Just because someone’s kid is doing competitions, it doesn’t mean it the best extracurricular, there are a many other things a student could do, research, internship, a job clubs, tutoring etc.

For college admissions, competition may work for very few, maybe 100 ish MOP students, but how many math majors is a university looking for? For the vast majority of students, doing competitions to improve admissions will not work. Much better to find your interest and develop it organically through extracurriculars.

You can look through what universities like MIT etc are looking for. They want smart community involved students that want to change the world and took some small steps in that direction while in high school. Doing problems sets in your room for hours doesn’t fit that profile well.[/quote]

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