Anonymous wrote:Just for discussion. Assume your child wants to pursue a liberal arts degree, and focuses on a state school like UVA. Also, assume your DC has the exact same high school GPA, but in one scenario they did Calc AB as a Senior, and in the other they did it as a Junior (and took, e.g., Calc BC as a Senior).
How important is this difference from an admissions standpoint? Anyone start a track at 7th/8th and see their DC later regret not being in the accelerated track because it made college admissions harder? How about the opposite, anyone regret pushing forward in 7th/8th and not seeing any benefit come admissions time?
Remember here, we are talking state school, no difference in GPA, and DC wants to major in history or poli sci in college. If there is no benefit to this type of individual, would DC be better off on a "less challenging" regular math track to AB Calc as a senior, and then using any time saved towards extracurriculars? What am I missing?
TIA.
Typically, students take AB or BC Calculus, not both. If a student takes Honors Algebra in 7th grade and and takes the sequential Honors classes, they would take BC Calculus their junior year and then Multivar Calc and Matrix Algebra in their senior year. If a student takes Honors Algebra in 8th and takes the Honors sequence, they would take BC Calculus their senior year. AB Calculus is taken by he student who take the general sequence or drop down from the Honors sequence.
In our scenario, if the students applying to UVA are on the bubble, then the one who took BC would win out because they chose the more challenging course. However, I would expect a student interested in Humanities to take more of the language APs and a student who is interested in STEM, to take more of the STEM APs.