Is Calculus or Stats More Advantageous for Student Success? It’s Complicated

For some high school students, statistics and other data science courses have unseated calculus as the de facto option for pursuing advanced math, in part due to targeted state efforts to expand pathways to higher-level coursework. But critics of this trend have asked whether students who opt for statistics will miss out on important math skills for college and career if they don’t take calculus. 

College admissions officers, especially at selective institutions, have a persistent preference for calculus as a differentiator, believing that it signals which students are ready for college-level work, research from the math-equity focused nonprofit Just Equations has shown. 

“People don’t realize how much of an unwritten rule it is that calculus is taken into account,” McChristian said.

The debate over the most important math pathways in high school—and how that shapes course sequences—has raged for years, implicating everything from when algebra is first offered to U.S. students to falling scores on the probability and statistics portion of national exams.

New research suggests the answer isn’t so clear cut. In fact, it depends on what kind of major, and what kind of career, students want to pursue, finds a new study of more than 5 million Texas students from researchers at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute and the University of Texas at Austin. 

Of the 178,000 students who took either Advanced Placement Calculus AB course or AP Statistics from 2015-2020, the calculus-takers were more likely to enroll in selective colleges and pursue majors in science, technology, engineering, and math than an otherwise similar group of their peers who took AP Statistics. But life outcomes for students were similar, regardless of which course they took. Analyzing students who graduated from 2003-2020, the researchers found students who took AP Statistics and AP Calculus were equally likely to earn a bachelor’s degree and had similar longterm earnings. And AP Statistics students were well-represented in scientific and math-intensive industries.