What MATH do I REALLY NEED for the MCAT

[Enkay96]

I'm at a point of taking Calculus 1 at my university. I was fine until I heard that the course is really, really hard due to how the professor grades and the grading system as well. My community college offers the same course for a cheaper price and it is more feasible in terms of work load and difficulty. My advisor told me to take the Calc that is at my university, I wan't... I really do but I'm having a hard time with "easier" work load, only one science class atm( gen. bio) and 2 language arts classes, and trig. I took trig in high school and did really, really well. Here it is 10X harder with all the physics that are being added to it. I'm really worried about Calc because I heard it from a math major that it is very, very difficult because of the professor's grading on the exams. Should I just take Calc at my community college? I know that I will be taking Bio, Chem, and a math class next term. Bio seems alright for now but I heard that Chem is pretty hard also. Not sure what to do... should I just take Calc at the university level and hope I don't fail the course. I have to worry about my GPA also, so if taking Calc at a community college wouldn't hurt... then I would like to know.

I looked at this practice test? Seems like the highest level of math on there is vectors which is trig...
http://www.premed411.com/pdfs/math.pdf

Thanks for all the help in advance!

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[ProudMD]

Calculus is 100% useless on the MCAT.

 

[allantois]

There is no Calculus on MCAT but it doesn't hurt to have taken Calculus. New MCAT will supposedly require you to make statistical inferences.

 

[Enkay96]

There is no Calculus on MCAT but it doesn't hurt to have taken Calculus. New MCAT will supposedly require you to make statistical inferences.

But isn't that more related to Statistics? Idk, but I forgot to mention that I'am taking Stats because of all the things I heard of how it relates to other science classes and research. I'm ok with taking Stats because the professor at least expects his students to be human and not living calculators.

 

[Enkay96]

Calculus is 100% useless on the MCAT.

Haha... yeah isn't it just great!

 

[altblue]

CC courses are generally easier, but I probably wouldn't assume all will be. A few students from a more prestigious university took gen chem at my old CC and ended up getting B's and C's. :/

Many science majors require 1-2 semesters of calc/applied calc, though, too. 🙂

 

[phunky]

Anyone who's graduated high school should know enough math for the MCAT.

 

[Boolean]

Calculus is 100% useless on the MCAT.

It may help you get some of the physics problems easier, however.

 

[Doug Underhill]

The correct answer is "head math". There are no calculators allowed on the MCAT and you will have to do a calculation like 7E-34 * 3E10 in one minute or so.