The Calculus Question- AB vs. BC
Considered by many to be the most terrifying class in high school (debatable, but we’ll move on), Calculus is on the roster of many a student’s junior and senior year schedule.
Many students, however, struggle with calculus before the class even begins. The prospective calculus student has choices to make! There are two AP Calculus classes that students can take—Calculus AB and Calculus BC. Many students know that these two options cover much of the same material and that BC is, somehow, harder than AB. But what are the differences between these classes, and which should you, the student, take?
Well, there are three options students have for enrolling in Calculus, they can take only AB, they can go straight into BC, or they can take AB as a junior and then BC as a senior.
There are two major differences between BC Calculus and AB Calculus.
First, BC Calculus covers more material than AB Calculus does. Everything in AB Calculus is in BC Calculus, but BC Calculus also covers a few other areas including:
Polynomial Approximations and Series
Series of Constants
Taylor Series
Parametric
Polar
Vector Functions
Note: These areas are not necessarily more difficult than the areas found on both tests.
Second, to accommodate for the wider range of topics presented, BC Calculus goes at a faster pace compared to AB Calculus. Usually, BC Calculus classes cover all or most of AB Calculus in the first semester. So, BC Calculus is not a harder level math, just a faster presentation of the same math with more material.
Let’s talk about why students would want to take BC in the first place. What are the advantages of taking a class that is more difficult? The first and largest reason is that a good BC Calculus score gives more college credit in almost all colleges. Generally, it counts for both AB and BC, so while a good score in AB might grant, say, 4 credit hours at a given school, BC would likely grant 8 credit hours at that same school. Woohoo! Additionally, BC Calculus looks even more impressive to prospective colleges than AB Calculus does, and thus can strengthen a student's chances of admission to undergraduate programs.
On that note, here's a little piece of Bumo advice for choosing your classes—don't take both AB and BC Calculus. While you certainly have the option of taking one and then the other if you take precalculus during sophomore year, AB Calculus during junior year, and BC Calculus during senior year, this is the weakest of the three Calculus "paths" in the eyes of colleges. If you've already taken AB, BC Calculus is seen, and rightly so, as being too similar to AB Calculus to be a challenge equivalent to taking a different math course such as AP Statistics or any other AP course.
For students on the fence between taking AB or BC Calculus, many high schools allow students to drop down to AB from BC. So, if a student is finding BC to be too challenging, at least there are options! For many students, this option is enough of a "cushion" to take BC Calculus.
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