How much harder is Calculus then Precalc, and how similar?

[PoPPeR]

I'm at a community college in California, and I took an assessment test in which after passing, made me elgible to skip precalculus and go straight to calculus. Most of my friends said they didn't really use anything they learned in pre-calc in calculus and in some ways thought the class was actually easier. Since this is a summer course, the pace would be a lot quicker as well.

I'm only considering it because I want to transfer after next year, and this will save me a lot of time if I do well. I know it will require a great amount of effort, but what exactly would I be facing?

Oh yeah, the last time I took an algebra course was my junior year of high school (2 years ago), which was Algebra 2 (precalc follows that, then calc).

 

[amdskip]

You may want to take the pre calc but you should be able to handle calc 1 without too many problems.

 

[MacBaine]

Do you know any trig? Cause that's pretty much all we learned in pre-calc...

 

[AgentEL]

The unit-circle was drilled into my head for pre-calc. Came in very handy for Calc.

 

[Kelvrick]

pre-calc is crap. All you need to know is some basic trig and you'll do fine in calculas.

 

[0roo0roo]

unless your realy good at math, just take a quarter of precalc. are you really in that much of a rush? easy A if your good. else, if you jump the gun at calc... u might really tank it. then again calc at some community colleges is kinda precalc + calc...or calc split way up

 

[DrPizza]

<---- calculus and pre-calculus (and physics) teacher

Calculus is generally easier than pre-calculus... at least the actual "calculus" steps of problems. Some problems depend on a lot of algebra and trig skills to either simplify solutions or to "rearrange" problems to make them more manageable in calculus.

I had one student skip pre-calculus (I think it was a scheduling accident??) a couple of years ago. He had to work a little bit harder than the rest of the students, but he was in the top 3 or 4 students in the class. If you tested out of pre-calc, I'd imagine that they feel you have the pre-requisite trig and algebra skills.

 

[hdeck]

Originally posted by: 0roo0roo
unless your realy good at math, just take a quarter of precalc. are you really in that much of a rush? easy A if your good. else, if you jump the gun at calc... u might really tank it. then again calc at some community colleges is kinda precalc + calc...or calc split way up

not everyone has the option of taking classes in quarters.

 

[PoPPeR]

oh ok. Well I took a semester of trig, and we used a unit circle like no other, so hopefully I'll survive.

edit: I thought it was weird because at my high school they didn't require trig to go to precalc, but they did at my community college. And yeah, I'm on a semester system, but during the summer I think it's just 8 weeks long. I have a friend that just aced Calc 2, and a couple other friends taking calc 2 this summer, so if I really start struggling at least I"ll have some people to ask for help

 

[Darien]

what exactly is "precalc"?

 

[KevinF]

At my high school, precalculus was a combined Algebra III/Trig class. The first semester was spent dealing with logs and other slightly more advanced algebra, and the second half was standard trigonometry.

 

[PingSpike]

Roughly 1000 times harder. You're doomed, kill yourself now.

If you have to ask, take precal.

 

[helpme]

If you know your algebra, I would say skip precalc.

 

[StageLeft]

I never took it and i got a C first year in Cal 1. I failed Cal II and redid it with an A-. All of my results were directly attributed to effort.

My conclusion is that you do not need pre-cal. Follow closely your lessons/ book and you'll be ok.