Unsure About My Abilities in Math

[JC92]

Ok, I'm going to try and make this short. I'm currently a senior in high school and I'm insecure about my abilities thus far in math. Basically my previous math teachers were, in my opinion, not the best. I was stuck in an all senior class for Algebra I, II, and Geometry; in which the teachers really "dumbed" the material down just so the seniors who really needed to pass to graduate wouldn't fail. This included them even skipping sections they deemed too difficult for them. For two of those classes (Algebra II and Geometry) the teachers were retiring the next year and really just wanted out of there. My Geometry teacher hardly taught us at all. He just assigned book work for the most part and chewed tobacco in the back of the class room. Yea, that class wasn't very productive. Any way, now I'm a senior myself and I'll be graduating this year. However, now I'm not sure whether or not I'm up to college level math. I may be able to pass the class, but I'm shooting for straight A's here and at least a 3.5 GPA, so I need to have my stuff together. And to top it all off, the majors that I'm seriously considering require a lot of math. So my questions are: What can I do at this point to fortify my math skills? If that means essentially re-mediating on the topics, what are some tips for going about that? Do most colleges offer a class or classes to help with this problem? Or am I out of luck? Thanks in advance for any advice.

 

[General_Sax]

Pick up http://www.stewartcalculus.com/media/8_home.php and see how you much you can do with it.

Don't expect to master everything by yourself, but if you can follow along and complete some questions [1/3,1/2] then you should be fine.

 

[hadsed]

I recommend you start summer classes this summer immediately after graduation. It'll be tough and annoying, but it'll get you caught up in your math classes. Most community colleges offer classes like college algebra, trigonometry, and precalculus. You should definitely take precalculus regardless of when you decide to start school. I'm not sure if you really need trigonometry.

A good measure of your algebra and trig skills might be SAT score. What did you make on the math portion of the SAT or ACT?

 

[Jack21222]

College will bring you up to speed on what you need to know. It just might take one extra semester.

 

[JC92]

Thanks for the responses so far. I made an overall 23 on my ACT, but I haven't taken my SAT tests. I also can't remember exactly what I made on the math section of the ACT (I seem to have lost the paper), but I know it wasn't my highest. Probably in the low 20's or high teens. But keep in mind I took my ACT after a full year of not having a math class in high school. So my math was rusty in general. The summer classes sound like a good idea. Is it possible to take those classes at a community college and then start going to a university during the fall? This really is frustrating though. I've never had a problem understanding the math topics and I even try to enjoy it as much as I can, but I keep having bad experiences with it.