ALEKS Precalc before Algebra?

[cookderosa]

I feel your pain, this situation was almost identical to mine with one of my sons. It took some time for me to unravel what exactly went on in OUR home, so I can't say for sure if this is what happened with your child or not. In my non-mathy brain, I thought of algebra as "letters of the math alphabet" and calculus as a "novel." So, for me, I didn't understand how someone could pass a pre-cal/trig class while having gaps in algebra. As it turns out, my understanding wasn't exactly accurate. A good friend explained to me (using an extension of my analogy) that it was more like two pieces of poetry by the same author. :p In other words, there are differences, and your child probably got rusty in algebra. It's a lot to memorize, and for some people, they simply have an intuition. I don't have any of those children in our home lol.

For the SAT, it's only algebra. For college placement exams, it's only algebra. So, for testing purposes, scoring highly will depend on mastery of algebra. I won't tell you what to do, but you may notice a higher test score if you went back through Intermediate and College Algebra with higher mastery before sitting those exams. And frankly, unless she's using the precal /calc in her degree plan for her field, it's probably not necessary...where having a solid skill set in algebra would create a bigger impact.

(for instance, I can think of a 100 fields that use algebra as a pre-req and very few that require calculus. Even most physics courses for non-STEM students use algebra based physics)

EDIT: I just re-read where she's going into nursing. I can promise you that unless the specific program requires calculus, college algebra is the requirement as well as the pre-req for her sciences.