Sophomore Riya Ranjan chose to take AP Calculus BC after her Pre-Calculus Honors teacher Sushma Bana recommended her to the class and AP Calculus BC teacher Katie Collins encouraged her to take the class, especially as a girl.
“Originally I thought BC was going to be pretty daunting to be honest because historically, not a lot of girls have taken BC,” Ranjan said. “I was talking to Ms. Collins during the course lecture for last year, and she said, ‘No, we need more girls [to] take BC. Often, girls are the ones that are less confident in their skills and we need more people who [are] actually talented and should take those classes.’”
AP Calculus BC, similar to AB, uses the flipped learning model, where students take notes on videos they watch at home and do problems at school. Ranjan likes the collaboration involved with working on problems in her group.
“By helping your peers, you're also learning more for yourself,” Ranjan said. “And also [it’s] a good way to make friends because you're forced to interact with the people around you, and you can learn cool things about them and actually become close to them.”
According to Ranjan, approximately 40% of her class received A’s, which she attributes to the difficulty of concepts that are unrelated to previous courses such as Pre-Calculus. Besides spending an hour to two hours a week doing homework, Ranjan spends most of her time studying for quizzes that happen once or twice a week. Ranjan encourages students to listen to their teachers’ recommendations and consider their overall course load for the year.
“If you want to take Calc BC over AB, and you really like math, you should definitely go for it,” Ranjan said. “But I would also say that if you don't really love math and you aren't necessarily the strongest [in math] you shouldn't take it because it is challenging. And I would say that [the class] is a good experience for a lot of kids so don't be afraid to take it but also just know your limits.”