I would suggest she take the BC and drop the Lit. That is what a math/science kid would take. However, is there a better teacher? At our high school the BC kids' lives were better in part because the BC teacher was so much better than the AB.

I don't think - for top 25 schools the AB vs BC is a deal breaker. I would consider her happiness and stress a more important decision than which calc. I would drop the Lit. For a math/science kid, AP Lit will be such a chore.

Anonymous wrote:My DD is a HS junior working on her senior year course selections. Math has always been her best subject. She is doing well right now in Precalc Honors. She is trying to decide between AP AB Calc and AP BC Calc for next year. She will have 3 additional APs (Spanish, Bio, Lit). She is concerned about the overall workload being too much if she chooses BC. She will be applying to top 25 schools, and plans to major in Chem, Bio, or another science. This year she is doing very well with her 3 AP classes, but it certainly is not easy, and she has many late nights.

Anyone with experience care to weigh in? Does it matter if she takes AB vs BC senior yr of HS? She is worried about maintaining her GPA (currently 4.23) and getting into college. I am concerned about her being prepared for the math once she gets there. Any input here would be much appreciated!

You might want to look at the schools she is considering and see what they are looking for. Most top schools would want BC plus the SAT Subject test B(the 2nd level).

With this major, she will be competing agianst top science and math students. That is what they take.

Anonymous wrote:My DD is a HS junior working on her senior year course selections. Math has always been her best subject. She is doing well right now in Precalc Honors. She is trying to decide between AP AB Calc and AP BC Calc for next year. She will have 3 additional APs (Spanish, Bio, Lit). She is concerned about the overall workload being too much if she chooses BC. She will be applying to top 25 schools, and plans to major in Chem, Bio, or another science. This year she is doing very well with her 3 AP classes, but it certainly is not easy, and she has many late nights.

Anyone with experience care to weigh in? Does it matter if she takes AB vs BC senior yr of HS? She is worried about maintaining her GPA (currently 4.23) and getting into college. I am concerned about her being prepared for the math once she gets there. Any input here would be much appreciated!

Have you weighed in with the counselor(s) at DC's school?

While taking AB calculus is definitely not the kiss of death and all this talk about "marketing" yourself is so totally OCD DC professional parent talk, in general colleges like to see the most rigorous courses available. If she's good at math and can take BC calc, I'd have her take it. Along with being the more rigorous course, if she gets a 4 or 5 on the exam, she might place out of two semesters of college calculus instead of the one that she would with AB which would free her up to take other elective classes she might be interested in later on.

If it's too overwhelming and she feels like she needs to lighten her load, she can always switch down to AB.

I'm seeing some interesting opinions that I would assume admissions people would make the final decisions. Is there actually anyone posting who is indeed an admissions person for a college/university? Or at the least a college counselor in a high school? No pretenders.

Otherwise, it's just speculation.

If she likes math/science and will "market" herself that way to colleges, needs to take BC. If she does not then she looks like she is not being honest about her interests/aptitude. She should drop one of the other APs (f they truly are a bigger workload than regular classes, not the case necessarily at the top independents). If the issue is free periods (and really need them senior year to meet with college counselors etc) then drop AP Bio if it is a double class, and find another science

Go with BC. She sounds exactly like the kind of student who will do well in the class. For someone who considers math her strongest subject, I don't think opting for AB would make a difference in her quality of life.

Anonymous wrote:At my DD's public school you can choose BC without taking AB. BC is very fast paced but can be done without taking AB.

Same at my DC's public school. You can take AB or BC, but you wouldn't take both in sequence. Both are preceded by PreCalc as a prerequisite. For BC, you need to take Honors PreCalc, which is a killer class (lots of Cs handed out to very diligent students) that intentionally drills the kids in speed and depth.

Anonymous wrote:Wait, her school lets you take Calc BC without AB? My dad is a HS math teacher, math curriculum leader (dept. head), and AB and BC are supposed to be in a sequence. The two semester-long AP classes replace regular (non-AP) Calculus because they go more in-depth than just one semester-long class. She should not take BC without AB. That is crazy. BC absolutely builds on AB and if she only has a Pre-Calculus foundation, she will not do well. Nothing on your kid, but this is not the way the AP Calc's are supposed to be taught.

At our school BC is AB plus BC, AB is just AB. That's pretty typical based on my experience in public and private schools. You wouldn't take AB one year and then BC the next because you'd be repeating AB. But maybe you are thinking about it in semesters? Most high school math classes are a year, not a semester. So AB is a year, and BC is a year.

OP, I think either one is fine and she should be careful not to over do it senior year. My DC took AB senior year and several of his AB classmates got into top 10 colleges including Harvard so even though there were more challenging classes available and many kids on a more accelerated track the colleges seemed to think that getting to AB was plenty adequate. Better to get an A in AB than a B in BC. And both will prepare her for college math - it wouldn't be the end of the world to retake calc in college anyway.

How about signing up for BC, and then taking calc this summer but not reporting it to colleges?

PP here. She might sign up for BC and then see how it goes and bump down to AB if BC is too much.

At my DD's public school you can choose BC without taking AB. BC is very fast paced but can be done without taking AB.

Wait, her school lets you take Calc BC without AB? My dad is a HS math teacher, math curriculum leader (dept. head), and AB and BC are supposed to be in a sequence. The two semester-long AP classes replace regular (non-AP) Calculus because they go more in-depth than just one semester-long class. She should not take BC without AB. That is crazy. BC absolutely builds on AB and if she only has a Pre-Calculus foundation, she will not do well. Nothing on your kid, but this is not the way the AP Calc's are supposed to be taught.

If she is looking at top tier schools in the sciences, she should absolutely take BC. The schools are looking for her to take the most rigorous courses available at her school. AB would make sense for a student who is clearly a future humanities/social science major since they are unlikely to be expected to take a college math class beyond stats. Calc AB on your DD's transcript would just signal that she wasn't a particularly strong math student - which doesn't seem to be the case - and could really hurt her admissions chances.

My DD is a HS junior working on her senior year course selections. Math has always been her best subject. She is doing well right now in Precalc Honors. She is trying to decide between AP AB Calc and AP BC Calc for next year. She will have 3 additional APs (Spanish, Bio, Lit). She is concerned about the overall workload being too much if she chooses BC. She will be applying to top 25 schools, and plans to major in Chem, Bio, or another science. This year she is doing very well with her 3 AP classes, but it certainly is not easy, and she has many late nights.

Anyone with experience care to weigh in? Does it matter if she takes AB vs BC senior yr of HS? She is worried about maintaining her GPA (currently 4.23) and getting into college. I am concerned about her being prepared for the math once she gets there. Any input here would be much appreciated!