zlacker

>>lewisf+(OP)
I am always surprised in hearing that American students need a programmable, graphing calculator. In most of Asia such is not required, only a much cheaper 'scientfic' calculator, even for graduate courses in science and engineering.

Some disciplines even in sciences/engineering, for example Computer Science, does not require any sort of calculator usually.

>>billfr+Od
Similar in Europe. It's a big concession that some exams allow "four-function calculator", and those are generally not allowed elsewhere except sometimes you'll have a teacher make a class concerning using a calculator... and that's it.

Graphing calculators are something you either are very enterprisey about, or something you start dealing with in university. My father's Casio FX series was good enough with its "record buttons" programming and basic graphing.

The few times we went above and beyond with tools, it involved playing around with Maxima in high school to ease up simplification and equation solving, but we had to be careful to not become dependant on it - after all, exams allowed a 4 function calculator only.