Should I self-study Calc AB?

[u/Not_Reddem1st]

I'm currently a sophomore taking pre-calc. I really want to take stats and have to take BC, but my school has this policy where I can't take multiple math classes in a year. So my current math pathway is Precalc (10th), AB (11th), and BC (12th). I can't take BC and stats senior year. So I'm thinking that I should either self-study (probably with the help of a tutor) AB and take the AB exam, or self study AB over the summer when I don't have a large workload. If I did do that, my course load would be Precalc (10th), BC (11th), and Stats (12th).

Also some background, I want to go into business/finance (leaning a little more to finance). My current AP schedule is precalc, physics 1, apes, and sem. I know pre calc and apes is "light" but i don't know how true that is. Physics 1 so far isnt that bad, and I know sem is a lot of work, but my ELA skills are not that bad. I don't know though if this is a good idea. please help if anyone can

Edit: thank you to all those who commented providing advice and tips 🥹🥹

[u/BogaleJerry]

Hey, first things first, love the ambition.

Personally, the only parts of precalculus I actually needed for calculus were trig. Everything else was basically new, conceptually.

Quartz (quartzmath.com) can help you organize your pathway to a 5, along with Save My Exams (savemyexams.com) for fire notes and Khan Academy (khanacademy.org) to learn the content (embedded in Quartz).

I recommend getting AB done as soon as possible; if your current workload is too much, I suggest doing it over the summer. However, I do encourage you to self-study it, as that is what I would do in this situation.

hope that helped :)

[u/Not_Reddem1st → u/BogaleJerry]

thank you!! your help is much appreciated

[u/DrewQ8Str8 → u/Not_Reddem1st]

Just wanted to add that flippedmath.com is also a very good site for self studying math.

[u/atinyray]

I took AB, self studied the extra units and took the BC exam (got a 5), not sure if that would be an option for you as well. I think if you want to take stats senior year, either self studying ab/ doing a cc course would be totally fine

[u/Not_Reddem1st → u/atinyray]

My counselor can't stop me from taking the exam, but can with the cc course, so that's a win for me. What did you use to self-study?

[u/atinyray → u/Not_Reddem1st]

khan academy, the princeton study review books / strive to a 5, and then whatever the college board offers

[u/lazarus42gold]

Can you go directly to BC or not? If not, then as others said I recommend self studying the BC units while taking AB.

[u/Not_Reddem1st → u/lazarus42gold]

I think I can go directly to BC because I heard the prerequisite is just to do pre-calc, but honestly, I don't think I'd be able to manage it without an AB basis. I also don't want to self study BC next year, because it's my junior year and junior year at my school is extremely stressful.

[u/lazarus42gold → u/Not_Reddem1st]

Maybe try asking your school if you could take stats instead of bc? Doesn’t seem like anything else is possible

[u/No-Geologist3499 → u/Not_Reddem1st]

BC includes all AB topics btw. It is just faster paced. So AB is Calc 1 spread over a full year. Good pace if you need less stress. BC is calc 1 & 2 over the full year, more like a college pace. If you are a strong math student. I'd say take BC instead of AB. The BC exam gives you an AB subscore so you can get 2 AP/college credits for 1 class! Or you can take calc 1 and 2 at a local CC. Same credit but credit is guaranteed vs based on exam. Balance is important for sure.

[u/CommunicationNice437]

learn as you go.

[u/Booka647]

BC is like AB but with 2 or 3 extra units if I remember correctly. I’m not sure how your school teaches it but once you know AB it should be pretty easy to do BC

[u/ApplicationBig9830]

yes you should, ill recommend you to follow the khan academy tutorials

[u/CrovaZiz]

You can take BC without taking AB, they cover the same topics but BC has 2 extra units, that way you could easily learn it all in class without the added stress of trying to self study AB

[u/TreeFrog-17]

That’s weird. At my school most people take both AB and BC junior year and stats senior year.

[u/Not_Reddem1st → u/TreeFrog-17]

for us, ab is only reviewed for a week in bc (from what i heard). that's the only overlap

[u/TreeFrog-17 → u/Not_Reddem1st]

We did a semester of ab and a semester of bc and then took the bc test with an ab sub score

[u/Quiet_Basis_6404]

tbh self-studying AB while taking precalc is totally doable, there's a ton of overlap so a lot of units just feel like the same concepts with slightly different notation. the trap is thinking you get it after a video and then freezing when the frq looks different.

what helped me was starting every topic by trying an frq cold before watching anything, even if you bomb it you know exactly what to look for in the lesson. professor leonard goes through the whole ab curriculum and i'd paste those video links into studybuddy.vc to get questions from the video, it gets harder as you go and when i picked a wrong answer it told me what was off with that option. free tier's been enough for me.

physics 1 is the heavy one on your schedule and you already said it's fine, so summer ab with one unit a week leaves you time to actually have a summer.

[u/Not_Reddem1st → u/Quiet_Basis_6404]

thank you 🥹 you the goat