Trig and Calc I

[Colonel Mitchel]

I'm a biology major who will be graduating in December. I have a weak-moderate background in certain maths such as Trig and Calc. I didn't take much Trig in highschool and didn't take any of Trig or Calc in undergrad, yet.
Therein lies my question. How important/useful to success as an optometry student and future optometrist are those two courses? I know Calc I is a prerequisite to Optometry schools. Should Trig be as well? I did very well in Physics with the math required there. I don't know if any of that math is considered to be trig or not. Would Trig be helpful enough in an Optometry college that I should take or audit a trig class?
Since I am graduating in December I will not be taking Calculus at my undergrad school. Should I be looking into taking it just at some community college back home or should I be really looking into it to make sure I get a REALLY good Calc course, like maybe even becoming a part-time student at a local university to take Calc there? I would prefer to take it a community college because it would be about half as expensive there as at any of the local universities. Any thoughts, suggestions, comments, whatever?

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[eyestrain]

Isn't there a pre-optometry forum for this?

 

[Colonel Mitchel]

I'll check again to make sure.

 

[Colonel Mitchel]

I didn't see it. If you could tell me how to get to it I would be grateful.

 

[alleigh79]

Under communities/optometry forum there is the pre-optometry forum... But I don't know why someone couldn't just answer your question.

Usually schools want you to have Calculus before or at the same time as physics. Anyway - if you've already had physics and math is not your thing. I would take it at a community college and do well. I do not think that most of the schools care where you take it - but to be sure you could call schools you are interested in and make sure that taking it at a CC would be acceptable.

UAB and SCO had not preferance over trig. based vs. calculus base physics so I could not imagine that they would care if calculus was taken at a 4 yrs. school or not. All I did was send an e-mail and they answered all my questions.

 

[ODduck]

The only trig I've had to use so far (1st year) is knowing how to push the TAN and inverse TAN button on my calculator.