AP Calculus

[Blue Hen]

I am planning for next year and closely looking over the Foerster's Calculus book. :001_huh:

Before looking this over very closely I thought DS would do the AB test next year--his 11th grade; and the BC test for his senior year. However, there seems to be quite allot of overlap between the two with BC's new material being polynomial approximations and series.

I'm wondering if folks traditionally do the AB material one year, and then review and do the additional new material the second year and have kids take BC. Or do folks usually decide to do one or the other but not both?

I'm still leaning toward doing AB next year considering all that DS will have on his plate --- AP Chem, AP Statistics, AP English lang & Comp, World History 1650 - 1850, and Great Books 1650 - 1850, Spanish. For fun he'll have his Science Olympiad, In-line speed skating, and Industrial Arts--finish building his wooden kayak.

Which should it be?

[Jane in NC]

Which should it be?

Carole, check out the AP test books. I think that there are more integration tricks that appear on the BC test, essentially the content of a second semester calculus course (which is where students see series).

What might help you make a decision is to examine some web sites of colleges that Science Kid might attend. Do they use the test for placement or credit? If the latter, will they give credit for both exams?

Jane

[Caroline]

For dual enrollment at Georgia Tech for public school kids in Multi Variable Calculus II, the student can have a 4 on either the AB or BC exam. The ones with BC credit should be better prepared, but all students should be able to succeed in the course. (This program is for students at public school in the state of Georgia. We have distance learning/dual enrollment opportunities.)

[Blue Hen]

What might help you make a decision is to examine some web sites of colleges that Science Kid might attend. Do they use the test for placement or credit? If the latter, will they give credit for both exams?

Jane

Great suggestion and that was interesting! I just checked two schools we've 'chatted' a bit about and both give some credit for AB and twice the credit for BC. Meaning, a 5 on the AB exam gives you 10 credits, while a 5 on the BC exam gives you 10+10 credit---which is how they wrote it. The max credits they will give for the two exams is 20; you can't double-dip. Oh, and the one school only gives credit iff you have taken their in-house test and performed at the level they require.

I'll have to check out the other too.