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Just in case you didn't know calculus BC is considered the harder AP calculus while AB is considered the easier.

• jameshart 10y ago
  So I went to school in a country that is notorious for forcing kids to specialize early - the UK. In my age cohort, at age sixteen we had to pick just three subjects to study for the next two years. I chose 'pure and applied mathematics' as one of those three subjects. Some people chose 'pure mathematics' and 'applied mathematics' as Two of their subjects. I guess, vaguely, that doing the expanded applied maths would have included more calculus (not sure what that might have entailed - more second order differential equation stuff maybe?) - but there was definitely no point where I was faced with the choice of 'should I do a bit of calculus, or a lot of calculus?'. 16 year olds are not good at knowing how much calculus they need to learn. I was pretty happy just choosing 'do I want to learn some mathematics, no mathematics, or a lot of mathematics?' - and leaving it up to the school to figure out how much calculus to include. Based on my career since, the amount of calculus included was, it turns out, 'enough'.
  • arethuza 10y ago
    Worth noting that the Scottish education system is different - people do 5 or 6 highers at 16/17 and those are used for university entrance rather than 3 A-levels at 17/18. Scottish first degrees are 4 years rather than 3 in England - presumably to allow for this.