<p>Looking back at the stage you guys are in right now, the experience of transferring from CC to UC was interesting, anxious and challenging. </p>
<p>However, I kind of enjoy my last 2 years at UCLA very much even though the work was much harder than at CC. Seriously, I miss my undergraduate courses, friends and professors that I have known there. </p>
<p>Anyways, after graduation, everyone go on to different path. Many of my friends are going to work in and outside of CA state, some are unemployed, some are preparing for professional licenses and only a few including me choose graduate school path. </p>
<p>I'm going back to UCLA next Fall for graduate school but without many friends. My feeling for this next path is indeed very much similar to how I felt when I transferring from CC to UCLA. Even though I have made friends there, many of them are no longer there, my graduate GPA will be starting fresh once again, and professors are new to me because I go from math to computer science...everything are new start and I always find that starting point is always hard. </p>
<p>Beside, for new transfers especially UCLA transfer students, I'm willing to help you out in math including upper division ones. I think I still retain the math materials because I really love the subject. </p>
<p>I make this topic so that everyone can share their feeling about your next path, next goal etc... Please share with everyone! I really appreciate your input! </p>
<p>Have a successful starting semester or quarter!</p>
<p>Wait, so you were a math major for undergrad and are now going to UCLA for a masters in computer science? </p>
<p>Anyway, thanks for your help. You should keep posting around to help future transfer students who don't know much about the transferring process. I know I knew very little when I first roamed these forums back in December, but I feel like I'm so much more knowledgeable now.</p>
<p>I did sub-par at De Anza CC, and I'm moving down to SMC aiming for 4.0's from here on out. Hopefully I'll go to UCLA too someday. good luck to you kevin101!</p>
<p>I have some general tips here for your math majors especially the math students at UCLA. This topic was created few months ago before my final finals before UCLA graduation. I still remember at that time I was nervous the most among all other quarters. I think you especially new transfers might find this helpful! Without further ado, here it is: </p>
<p>
Hey Kevin,</p>
<p>thanks for replying to my thread about math courses at UCLA.</p>
<p>I was actually accepted as a Math/Applied Science major as a transfer student. I THEN found out that the management/accounting track is no longer available, so I decided that if I do attend UCLA, I'd switch to Math-Econ.
</p>
<p>First of all, congratulation! How did you feel when you received that big package with the acceptance letter inside and some other info regarding how great UCLA is. I'm glad that you are joining our Bruin family! Welcome to UCLA math department!</p>
<p>For the Math/Applied Science with concentration in Accounting/Management, you are right that it is no longer available. In fact, I am in their last year to graduate with this major. It is particularly a strong major because of the diversity of required courses including statistics, math, accounting and two MBA graduate level courses (I'm lucky to have completed these 2 courses and this fact helped me getting many interviews indeed.) </p>
<p>For the Math/Econ, beside all the lower division math courses and 3 basic econs (I assumed you finish most of them), you need to take 7 math and 6 econ for upper division. Here is the link: UCLA Department of Mathematics . </p>
<p>
Anyways, like I said in my thread, I'm a little intimidated by the Math courses. I like math, but I don't LOVE math. It is a subject that gives me trouble (hell, calc III, linear algebra, and DEs was difficult), so I keep thinking I'm not cut out for the upper-div classes. </p>
<p>Are the curves in the UD math courses pretty hard to work against? Are their any accommodations to help these UD math students out besides TA/prof office hours? </p>
<p>Any other advice you could give me?</p>
<p>Thanks"
</p>
<p>Now, you should be relieved with this major because all you need is only 7 math courses but pure math needs about 14 courses. For additional 6 econ courses, I heard from friends that the econ material itself is not as tough as math but there are some tough professors who give lots of work and harsh grades (I personally don't take econ there so i don't know, though). </p>
<p>My general advices for you:
1. Not having the crazy passion for math does not neccessarily mean that you will fail the math courses but of course if you love it, you will probably do better so first of all, don't worry too much! Try your best and you will be fine, at least you will pass!</p>
<ol>
<li>For the first quarter (Fall 2008?), you should take all the lower division if you are still missing them. I strongly advice you to take Math 115A (Linear algebra) before you even touch any other math because that course will bridge the gap between lower and upper division math. Once you do fine in 115A, you will gain confidence and apply those learning technique to other upper division math courses. Math 115A is 60% theoretical and 40% computational. You deal with "linear independence, bases, orthogonality, the Gram-Schmidt process, linear transformations, eigenvalues and eigenvectors, and diagonalization of matrices." </li>
</ol>
<p>Math 131A (real ananlysis) is considered the toughest math course according to many students and many delay this course untill their senior year. It is VERY THEORITICAL, it is like calculus I. However, you don't calculate derivatives or integration but you rather prove all those fancy calculus theorems, existence of limit, convergence of limit ...etc so you deal with epsilon and delta (remember those in beginning calculus?). </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Taking all math courses in a quarter is overwhelming so for your major, you have the flexibility to mix econ and math courses together. I suggest you either take 2 econ and 1 mah (this is easiest option) or 2 math and 1 econ (this is balanced option). For any math course, you will probably have weekly homework which is very long (we spend average 3-9 hours per week just for 1 class doing homework.) and you won't spend much time on econ (again this is my econ friends' opinions). </p></li>
<li><p>Try to adapt to this new quarter system as much as you can. This is essentially very important for you, new student. I can assure you that you will be shocked by the different grading system (almost all math courses here are based on curve and the the test grade has 70% average and sometimes as low as 30%) , by the pace of the course (finding out that you have midterm on 3rd or 4th week), by the competition among many smart students, by the new environment (you need to walk back and forth at least 20 minutes per day from your apartment or parking to your classrooms)...etc</p></li>
</ol>
<p>So be prepared for new changes like don't judge your grades by the x% but rather judge it by where you stand in the class (percentile). In another words, if you have around the median score, you will get about B- to B+ which is a passing grade which in fact the grade most students end up with. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>Math 170 (probability) is very hard, and replacing it with a statistics course would be a good option for you. </p></li>
<li><p>Visit professors in their office hours if you get stuck in your assignments (this will most likely happen). TAs will help you a lot too if you ask them so just be active and ask around, just don't sit there thinking how badly you will fail but rather run around and ask for help. </p></li>
<li><p>Form study groups with your classmates especially the ones who are smart. </p></li>
<li><p>Have a good attitude toward your progress and always reward yourself whenever you get a good grades in homework, midterms and especially final. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Anyways, my final week is approaching so I might not visit this forum for a few weeks... I will come back whenever I have time. If you have any further questions or concerns, please feel free to post them here.</p>
<p>EJ20: I'm sure you are aware that if you did badly at one community college, you will still have to report those grades when you are applying to UCLA or any other university as a transfer student. SMC's a great school, but I hope you are not switching because you want to ignore the grades you got at El Camino. Sorry to say it, but those grades will always be there and you may have more luck changing them if you stay at El Camino and re-take courses, do academic renewal, etc.</p>
Thanks for your support Kevin. I'll definitely keep you in mind for the math class i am taking this fall. Good luck with grad school
</p>
<p>Thank you for your encouragement. I'm kind of nervous about graduate school at the moment. I'm not sure how it turns out but maintaining a B or better at all times is not easy for engineering courses.</p>
<p>Yes. I have graduated from UCLA with ** Math / Accounting / Management ** and now for graduate school, I'm doing 3 programs: **
1. MS in Computer Science--networking @ UCLA
2. MS in Engineering Management @ USC
3. Certificate in Electrical Engineering--Digital Signal Processing @ UCLA Extension. **
3 of them are different engineering. </p>
<p>
You are welcome. I will try to help as much as possible. I also see you posting around a lot in transfer subforum, keep up the good work helping others.</p>
<p>Hey, congrats on getting into UCLA grad school :). Say, what do you think of my first quarter schedule? Thats more than 1 math course but I'm an applied math major. </p>
<p>usdenick: thanks for caring, im fully aware of that. I didn't fail or receive any "F" grades, but i wasn't a "straight A's student" at De Anza CC. Im gonna turn things around at SMC. =) thanks for caring</p>
<p>^ I think you'll do fine. I know someone who had all F's his first year of CC and turned around and got straight A's his second year. And guess what? He was admitted to UCLA. And you're not even in as bad a boat as him. But I don't know if going to SMC would help unless they have TAP. Plus, that's quite a travel.</p>
Hey, congrats on getting into UCLA grad school . Say, what do you think of my first quarter schedule? Thats more than 1 math course but I'm an applied math major. </p>
<p>stats100a
math115a
pic10a </p>
<p>14units total
</p>
<p>You reminded me about my first year @UCLA. Yeah, that is a good start. let me give you some more details:
*stats100a * a pretty new language, you will encounter topics like random variable, common continuous distributions like normal curve etc... and for those topics, you do a bunch of proofs for many formula or identity. </p>
<p>math115a all math majors have to take it, this is the beginning upper division course and it serves as the bridge to narrow the gap between lower and upper courses. I recommend that you should put effect in this. It has like 60% proofs and 40% computations. When you move on to the other upper classes, the proof consist of more than 50% and some courses are nearly all proof. Therefore, doing well in this 115A will not only give you the confidence to excel in other courses, but you will make a smooth transition to tackle university level courses. </p>
<p>PIC10A This class is basically no proof but it requires tedious work. You will learn C++ in great details. This class is both hard and time consuming but you will learn a lot and C++ is also very essential skill in job hunting so I recommend you try to learn this well. From my experience, the professor will give you weekly assignment of writting a certain program and it is basically free style, you write it any way you want as long as you have pass some criteria like neatness, logic, the program must run etc ...then you accumulate certain points for each area with a total of 20 points. These assignments take a long time to finish and I usually asked the TAs for help especially in debugging the code. Debugging the code to make the program work might take hours to do and sometimes it is very frustrating. The exams are pretty tricky but the professor did curve. Anyways, I tried my best plus my interest in the subject led me to receive an A in this course. It was tough!</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Wow, that is pretty interesting to hear but did he go to a second CC to start all over. If so, when he applied to UCLA, did he send in the transcript from the first CC that contains a bunch of F?</p>
<p>
[quote]
stats100a a pretty new language, you will encounter topics like random variable, common continuous distributions like normal curve etc... and for those topics, you do a bunch of proofs for many formula or identity
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I wonder, what is the hardest part about this course to grasp? If its the first part, as often with many subjects, I'll probably self-study it before school starts. Btw, did you take Wu? </p>
<p>
[quote]
math115a all math majors have to take it, this is the beginning upper division course and it serves as the bridge to narrow the gap between lower and upper courses. I recommend that you should put effect in this. It has like 60% proofs and 40% computations. When you move on to the other upper classes, the proof consist of more than 50% and some courses are nearly all proof. Therefore, doing well in this 115A will not only give you the confidence to excel in other courses, but you will make a smooth transition to tackle university level courses.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't know how hard proofs are in upper div. But for my intro linear algebra class, it wasn't the proofs that screwed me over as they were kinda easy. It was the calculations. It's hard to do a row reduction, matrix multiplication, gram schmit process etc without making a numerical mistake. I got a B in that class so I'm kinda nervous on how I'm going to do here. </p>
<p>
[quote]
PIC10A This class is basically no proof but it requires tedious work. You will learn C++ in great details. This class is both hard and time consuming but you will learn a lot and C++ is also very essential skill in job hunting so I recommend you try to learn this well. From my experience, the professor will give you weekly assignment of writting a certain program and it is basically free style, you write it any way you want as long as you have pass some criteria like neatness, logic, the program must run etc ...then you accumulate certain points for each area with a total of 20 points. These assignments take a long time to finish and I usually asked the TAs for help especially in debugging the code. Debugging the code to make the program work might take hours to do and sometimes it is very frustrating. The exams are pretty tricky but the professor did curve. Anyways, I tried my best plus my interest in the subject led me to receive an A in this course. It was tough!
[/quote]
</p>
<p>wow, should I put it off until later? I've never taken a CS class before and I can barely even use Microsoft word let alone program. Plus, I'm a really slow typer.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Wow, that is pretty interesting to hear but did he go to a second CC to start all over. If so, when he applied to UCLA, did he send in the transcript from the first CC that contains a bunch of F?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>No. He stayed at the same CC. I guess they really take into consideration of upward trends. Plus, he was an Anthro major; which is non impacted.</p>