Doing well in sciences, but miserably failing calculus

[alexfoleyc]

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How bad does it it look for med schools if you fail Cal? It is not the I suck at math (Not bragging, but I'm really good at performing mathematical operations) that's the reason I took Cal, however, cal has too many abstract concepts. I just don't understand it. Most of the med schools I want to go to don't require calculus. What should I do?

 

[postbacker]

How bad does it it look for med schools if you fail Cal? It is not the I suck at math (Not bragging, but I'm really good at performing mathematical operations) that's the reason I took Cal, however, cal has too many abstract concepts. I just don't understand it. Most of the med schools I want to go to don't require calculus. What should I do?

Is it required for your major? If not, then why take it? Drop it...

 

[alexfoleyc]

Is it required for your major? If not, then why take it? Drop it...

No it's not. I just took because I heard some med schools require it, but when i was browsing the websites of the schools i want to attend they dont require it. only those insane schools like harvard, yale require it.

 

[Cranial Gavage]

What kind of calculator are you using? A TI-89 was my saving grace in Cal I-II. You can use it to compute limits, derivatives, integrals, sigma notations, and much more. Of course, there are some sections of exams that profs won't let you use a calculator on, but it sure helps when doing homework and learning how to solve problems.

 

[BluePhoenix]

First off...don't use your calculator, it's ok for checking your answers but getting used to using your calculator for basic problems will sink you once you end up in a situation where you're not allowed to use it. That and, you shouldn't need a calculator for calculus if you actually know what you're doing.

Second, you say that you're good at doing operations but don't get the abstract concepts of calculus. Calculus is in no way abstract, it's completely logical. That being said, if the reasoning is difficult to understand - don't worry about it. Very rarely will a professor ask you WHY you do something, a good majority of professors only want to see that given a problem, you know what operation to perform on it, and that you can do that operation correctly. Memorize the rules and it's all good. Very few people actually understand all the nitty gritty of math and if you're not a math major, stressing yourself out trying to learn it is completely pointless. There's only so many problems they can give you to solve in calculus, so do practice problems and eventually you'll have seen pretty much anything they can throw at you.

 

[Cranial Gavage]

you shouldn't need a calculator for calculus if you actually know what you're doing.

This is very true. I would expand my previous comments by saying that you should use a calculator primarily as a tool to check your answers after doing the work by hand. Don't let it be a crutch!

Also, I would echo BluePhoenix in saying that Calculus requires you to learn logical operations, not master abstract concepts. As a simple illustration, you can compute exponents of the imaginary number i without pondering what i actually signifies.

 

[BlackSails]

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/calc.html#calch

Its not quite complete, but I really do like this website.

 

[nabeel76]

Calculus is not required at most schools, however 1 year of college level math is usually required. I believe that the majority of schools expect either 1 year of calculus OR 1 year of statistics. So plan accordingly. If you are failing calculus and need to drop it make sure you have time built into you schedule to pick up a year of stats - if you have not already done so, in its place.

 

[nabeel76]

P.S. To answer you first question, how bad does it look to fail calculus. It looks bad, so try not to fail it. After all it is looked at as one of the Sciences when calculating your BCPM GPA. At the very least an F will kill your BCPM GPA.