La Habra High School
HONORS/ADVANCED PLACEMENT COURSES
Top Ten Reasons to Take AP Calculus at La Habra

by Barbara De Roes
Updated 7/9/07 (scores arrived at school)
9/20/07 (national stats published)

Summer 2007 Email Group & Assignment

  1. AP Calculus has the highest pass rate of any AP subject at LHHS. For more details, click on each individual year.

    Year # Students
    Passing     		LHHS % National % local - national
    2007 35 AB
    +11 BC
    = 46     		87.5% AB
    100% BC
    90.2%     		58.8% AB
    80.2% BC     		28.7% AB
    19.8% BC
    2006 37 AB
    +10 BC
    = 47     		92.5% AB
    76.9% BC
    88.7%     		61.4% AB
    81.3% BC     		31.1% AB
    2005 35 AB
    +18 BC
    = 53     		77.8% AB
    100% BC
    84.1%     		57.9% AB
    81% BC     		19.9% AB
    19% BC
    2004 42 AB
    +6 BC
    = 48     		76.4% AB
    75.0% BC
    76.2%     		59.3% AB
    86.9% BC     		17.1% AB
    2003 28 82.4% 65.9% 16.5%
    2002 16 100% 67.3% 32.7%
    2001 16 88.9% 63.9% 25.0%
    2000 10 83.3% 63.5% 19.8%

  2. Regardless of your major, colleges will be more impressed by AP Calculus on your transcript than any other single course (with the possible exception of AP Physics C, which requires calculus taken previously or concurrently). During a Summer 2001 AVID workshop, they announced that studies show the best predictor of success in (completion of) college is the highest level of math success in high school. So admissions offices (and scholarship committees!) seek out AP Calculus students.

  3. Every student in the class of 2000 gave the instructor an "A" on the year-end evaluation form. They had no suggestions for how to improve the course (although I do <rubbing hands together>. Y2000 was my first year teaching Calculus in high school. I "taught" it twice before at UCI as a graduate teaching assistant leading discussion sections). In 2001, the evaluation forms were distributed after the last senior day. 2002 update: I still have topics that I plan to improve!

  4. When I imagined myself teaching math, I really hoped against all hope that I'd be able to teach calculus some day, since it (really the theory behind it) was my absolute favorite class during my re-education years.

  5. Calculus is cool because it lets you fathom some mind-bending ideas, and because it opened the floodgates of mathematical development. Mathematical knowledge increased exponentially after Newton and Leibniz made their crucial contributions, and every branch of mathematics is touched in some way by calculus.

  6. The latest brain research shows that new skills slip out of your brain in as little as 6 weeks of disuse. It gets much worse if you don't do math for a year. And no other class will give you the practice you need to retain the math skills you learned in the last year or two. So, taking Calculus in high school will make your college life easier, but NOT taking it immediately after Precalc will make it extra difficult, since you will either retake Precalc in college before taking Calc, or struggle to recapture those skills while taking Calc.

  7. Despite public perception, calculus is not very difficult. It's just that you need to do well in 12 years of math to take the class, and you need to have finished those 12 years in 11 or less to take the class in high school.

  8. The AP Calculus curriculum is richer than what most colleges teach, and you will do better in the courses that depend upon it than students who take calculus in college. (By "richer," I do not mean more difficult. It's a different emphasis - more on concepts than on cookbook algorithms.) That's not just my opinion. The College Board has done studies comparing AP students with students who don't take calculus until college.

  9. The pace of the AP course is much more reasonable than a college course, giving you more time to absorb the ideas.

  10. You need to understand all of Foxtrot's jokes. Like the 3rd panel below.