<p>What's typical for a semester? Does it depend on the major? Does 25 pset for one class seem average or above average?</p>
<p>seems a bit high (also depends on the class)</p>
<p>All my classes have 5-9 psets. You get 1-2 weeks to do them. They’re not short homework assignments you get in high school, which is why the number isn’t so high.</p>
<p>With that said, some classes such as 18.100 have assignments due before every class, so a number such as 25 would seem reasonable for that class. But that is definitely very above average.</p>
<p>Some classes don’t have p-sets at all, or have fewer p-sets, and have a large semester-long project or paper instead.</p>
<p>For example:
genetics: 6 p-sets, one larger p-set, three exams, one final
experimental biology: three exams, biweekly lab writeups, one huge paper, one smaller paper, attendance
computational biology: four p-sets, one exam, one final project</p>
<p>iceui2,</p>
<p>Ok, this explains why my son’s 18.100A class has seemed a bit, uh, overwhelming. The teacher did indeed give psets before every class; thus, there were 25 due. Not sure how many exams or anything else.</p>
<p>All of my classes typically have one pset a week (so about 9-12 psets total).</p>
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<p>From my understanding, 18.100A is run more like a high school class, in that you get daily assignments (and weekly short quizzes) that are not the deeply theoretical problems you get in most pset-based classes at MIT. </p>
<p>A quick check of OCW seems to confirm this - the problems in that class, in the past at least, were taken from the text book. That’s very rare at MIT, since text books often just have you straightforwardly piece information from a chapter together to solve problems.</p>
<p>^Except the textbook is not your typical high school textbook. Arthur Mattuck, the author, teaches the class. 18.100 is very theoretical - the daily assignments take a lot of effort. Much more so than your average high school homework.</p>
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<p>Eh, no, it’s going to be like your typical college textbook. A quick google search shows that this book is used in a number of colleges, many which are not MIT caliber. I would not expect the problems in the book to be MIT caliber problems. Skimming through the course website ([18.100A</a> Fall 2012](<a href=“http://math.mit.edu/~apm/f12-18100A.html]18.100A”>18.100A Fall 2012)), which does have psets with some actual problems printed instead of references to the book, seems to line up with this as well.</p>
<p>From the people I know who have taken 18.100A (none of whom were math majors - the math majors seem to look down on a math major taking 18.100A), none of them had difficulty with the material. What they did have difficulty with was the fact that they had no opportunity to plan their work, since they had to get the psets done within a day or two. That was stressful, especially when friends of mine, say, had prod week for a play, or a bunch of other assignments due in the same week, but little time to get a head start. There’s a difference between stress because the problems are difficult and stress because you have a lot to do.</p>
<p>Yes, that’s what my son said, piper. It was stressful not knowing what assignments were due until two days before they were due.</p>
<p>As far as math majors looking down on 18.100A, well, that’s encouraging since my son’s a math major. I think 18.100A was the only class to fit in his schedule. My son’s friends, thankfully, aren’t looking down on my son because he took it. I guess he’s got some nice friends.</p>
<p>I think a significant number of math majors take 18.100A. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to be good preparation for further math classes that have 18.100 as a prerequisite, since so many people take 18.100B or 18.100C.</p>
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<p>I don’t think this is a good metric to use. At least in math, most of the textbooks used in undergraduate classes are also used at a wide variety of schools. And the problems in problem sets in many cases come exclusively from textbooks.</p>
<p>shravas,</p>
<p>It seems like MIT should eliminate the class and offer more sections of the 100B and
100C. What can a student do to play catch up? I’m guessing my son just took the advise of his advisor when signing up for classes. Freshmen might not have all the info they need to know these things (or perhaps it was just my son that didn’t know). It looks like he could have taken 100C but not 100B. I guess he should talk to other students a lot more before signing up for classes.</p>
<p>Advisors at MIT are pretty useless. Just want to point that out.</p>
<p>@ice, I’ve heard that it really depends on the department and who you get, no? I don’t think all advisors would necessarily be useless. I heard from some upperclassmen that their advisors were extremely helpful.</p>
<p>Freshman advisors are usually mostly familiar with GIRs, so they usually won’t be able to properly advise someone looking to take more advanced classes outside of their department.</p>
<p>@sbjdorlo What your son should do probably depends on what courses he wants to take that have 18.100 as a prereq. If the class number looks like 18.1xx or 18.9xx, then it would be very useful to somehow self-study the material not covered in 18.100A. If the class number looks like 18.7xx, then they are probably just looking mathematical maturity, and your son would be fine taking the class, but might just need to work harder (or maybe not).</p>
<p>I thought my son’s advisor would be ok given that she’s in the math department but I have no way to gage that. She seems gung ho on taking lots of classes and going sophomore, but my son might just stick with four classes a semester. Honestly, he’s loving MIT and his friends and social life and probably (ha-ha) not spending enough time in class.</p>
<p>shravas, my son did study analysis in high school using Bartle’s Elements of Real Analysis, but I don’t know if that’s a good text or not. He was talking about taking number theory, probability and random variables, and topology as his next three classes. I think he’s interested in statistics as an emphasis, but that could change as he’s mentioned doing the 18C major now.</p>
<p>Also, my son says his test grades in 100A are good, As and Bs, so I think it was a matter of lack of time management and too many psets. Hopefully, he’ll do some self studying during IAP to catch up on what was deficit in the class. </p>
<p>He has a friend who did take 100C and he says he’s struggling and this guy is smarter and more experienced than my son, for sure.</p>