<p>Since I've been accepted ED, there are no other things to care/think about than anything pertaining to college...
At Penn, when you're selecting your courses for the new school year, are you allowed to select your profs as well? Or is it, like, you sign up for a class like Math114 and the scheduling system assigns you to any one of the profs teaching that class?</p>
<p>Hey fellow ED Acceptee! 
My friend who is at Wharton right now (Class of 2015) said that you do get to pick what professors you want, I believe. And based on what I’ve seen on this forum (I see a few posts on “Which professor is better, Professor X or Y?”), I do believe we have some choices!</p>
<p>You pick the professor based on which lecture of a particular class you attend. However, except for unusually large classes like Math 104/114 that everyone has to take, most classes are usually taught by only one professor.</p>
<p>What does Wharton do about math/stats placement for freshmen who’ve already taken AP Calc BC, AP Stats, multivariate calc and differential equations? Would STAT430/510 be appropriate, or is there another recommended placement?</p>
<p>Ah, Penn course selection. Here’s the process as simply as I can put it.</p>
<p>At some point in time, classes come out on Penn InTouch. Some will have professors listed, and some won’t. Almost all classes will have assigned times (the only instance I can think of a class not yet having an assigned time was when CIS 196 was added to the system after registration opened, and that was corrected within 24 hours).</p>
<p>Unlike other schools, there is no priority for registration based on any arbitrary factors. I know that a lot of public schools have upperclassmen register first, and I seem to recall Duke having three randomly assigned groups of students with registration priority that cycles every semester.</p>
<p>At Penn, you put in your course requests ahead of schedule during a time period called advance registration. You are able to rank your classes in order of preference. The general advice given is to put classes of a small size, such as foreign language and writing classes, high in your priority rank, whereas classes for your major should be low (since supposedly you are guaranteed spots in major classes). This system has worked pretty well for me, as I’ve gotten the exact schedule I’ve wanted for both fall and spring semesters, down to recitation times and everything.</p>
<p>It should be noted that this may be because I’m in M&T and have a lot of AP credit, so I’m taking lots of major classes early on. I’ve seen a lot of kids in CAS on the Penn Facebook group complain about how they only got one or two of their course requests, possibly because they were trying to enter popular gen eds.</p>
<p>Essentially - you sign up for classes in advance, and you rank them based on personal preference. Penn’s computer system then assigns classes. At that point, you can add and drop classes at any point in time; the change happens instantly. For example, over the summer, I signed up for MATH 114 via advance registration. However, I decided to self-study the MATH 114 material and take MATH 240 instead. So in August, I dropped MATH 114 and added MATH 240. The changes were reflected instantly, and as soon as I added the class to Penn InTouch (since it was after advance registration had ended and normal registration had opened), I was enrolled in the class.</p>
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<p>Unless you took your multi and diff EQ classes at a university similar in prestige to Penn, you won’t be able to get transfer credit for the classes. Penn offers two options to rectify this: you can take a departmental placement exam, or you can take a more advanced math class and gain retroactive credit.</p>
<p>The first option can be somewhat tricky. With full admission that this is secondhand knowledge, a friend who sat the MATH 114 placement exam this year told me that they only permitted six kids to gain credit for the class. So don’t bank on using the placement exam.</p>
<p>A much safer bet is to take a higher math class. As I mentioned a few paragraphs above, I took MATH 240, which (as you may know) is a hybrid of linear algebra, vector calculus, and differential equations. Upon passing this class, you gain passing credit for MATH 114 (and MATH 104, had you not gotten a 5 on calc BC). I came into the class without having taken multivariate calc or differential equations in a classroom setting, and I left with an A+. It’s not that bad of a course (although the textbook is a real POS).</p>
<p>I wouldn’t recommend jumping right to STAT 430. Penn requires you to have MATH 114 credit to take the class. This means that your freshman fall enrollment in STAT 430 is dependent upon passing the departmental placement exam. Moreover, from what I understand, the spring STAT 430 professors (Low and Krieger) are much more competent than the fall STAT 430 professors. Finally, your friends will be taking STAT 430 in the spring. Do not underestimate the value of having friends in your classes.</p>
<p>In short, take MATH 240 in the fall, and save STAT 430 for the spring.</p>
<p>^Fantastic advice. Thank you. And considering that the textbook is a POS, are there any study guides or alternative texts that you found particularly helpful?</p>
<p>Not a problelm! My plan of attack for the class was to pay attention to my professor’s lectures. I had Herman Gluck, who is great at explaining the concepts behind the math. (You can Google his name and discover that he’s a bit famous in the math world, which I was surprised to find out.) Gluck was extremely lax, however, on doing computation in class. Some vector calc problems can be extremely tricky, as you may know.</p>
<p>So after absorbing the concepts in lecture, I drilled practice problems from the textbook. I found a full PDF solutions manual to an earlier edition of the textbook, which really helped me figure out the problems.</p>
<p>Finally, I took a bunch of former final exams (they’re on the math department website) before my own final exam. I also got four or five friends to take the exams with me, so we were able to compare answers and solutions.</p>
<p>Best of luck!</p>
<p>Hey Keasbey Nights! Your detailed-filled post was golden and incredible helpful. I was just wondering:</p>
<ol>
<li>Do you think dual-degree program participants get higher priority in picking classes? I was just curious because I’m in LSM. </li>
<li>Why is the Math 114 placement exam so hard? Is it because they set a very high cut-off score for passing?</li>
</ol>
<ol>
<li><p>I’m in M&T, and I haven’t had any scheduling issues. I know M&Ts and LSMers that have. It’s nice to think that being in a dual-degree program gives priority, but you never know. On a random note, one of my best friends at Penn is an LSM '15; I can direct you to him if you have specific questions about anything!</p></li>
<li><p>I think that they were just really uptight this year about how many kids they wanted to grant credit to. I’ve heard that it’s been easier in years past.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>Great stuff, KeasbeyNights. Is the text for Math 240 still Zill & Cullen? If so, what would you recommend math/stat course-wise for someone already familiar with that material?</p>
<p>Yeah, we still use Zill & Cullen, Third Edition. It’s the first textbook I’ve ever disliked. If you’re familiar with all of the 240 curriculum, why not take MATH 241? You’ll get retroactive credit for 114 and 240.</p>
<p>I’ve heard it’s an awful class from a friend who took it as a first semester freshman.</p>
<p>Zill and Cullen is a terrible textbook, it basically just shows you how to calculate things, no theory in it at all. My professor hated it. Unfortunately the calculus courses at Penn (math 104-math 241) have a history of being terribly taught because they are mostly application based courses being taught by true mathematicians (people who spend there lives doing stuff like number theory and algebraic geometry). My suggestion would be to teach the missing material to yourself well (like if you know most of what is in math 240, but are unfamiliar with a few topics) because while it is very important material if you are majoring in the physical sciences or engineering, that is what you will most likely be doing if you take the classes. If you plan to major in math, take math 116, the honors sequence, it’s taught better and involves proofs.</p>
<p>@Keasbey Nights: Thanks for the info! One of my friends is actually an LSM '15-er, but I always love hearing about the experiences of other dual-degree members and fellow Quakers!</p>
<p>Mark Pan SAS '11 (VP of the Undergraduate Assembly last year) wrote [a</a> fantastic guide to course registration](<a href=“http://www.markpan.com/advreg/]a”>http://www.markpan.com/advreg/) on his website.</p>
<p>A general rule for finding good professors for intro level classes is to try and the non-tenured ones, especially the postdocs and lecturers, as they will put a lot more time into preparing for the class. The material in the calculus classes is pretty standarized as all the engineer departments have strict requirements on what they want taught, so as long as you have a professor who follows what he’s supposed to do, it should be fine. Unfortunately some of the older professors feel more creative; I’ve heard of one prof who in math 240 decided to teach abstract algebra among other things.</p>
<p>@cbagzdad: what are you interested in/what do you plan on doing eventually? </p>
<p>If you’re not really going to do a math-heavy field after college, then probably take a linear algebra class. It’s very useful and applicable in a lot of areas. Math312 might be good for that, although I’ve had no experience with it so you might want to ask someone who’s done it. </p>
<p>If you plan on doing something math heavy in the future, it would be a good idea to take some proof based classes now to get used to it, because proofs become more intuitive after you’ve seen them a lot. Measure theory/stochastic DEs/etc. are used widely in finance and other applied math areas, and they require a lot of background in analysis.
Usually you’d want to take math116-260 freshman year. 116 is completely disjoint from anything taught in 114/240; the first half is elementary real analysis (delta-epsilon definition of limit, continuity, riemann integrals, etc.), and the second half is an intro to theoretical linear algebra (vector spaces, basis, inner products, etc.) which is continued in 260. The second half of 260 might be a bit boring for you as it is spent entirely on multivariable calc and doesn’t really go into it in more detail than a regular 240 calculus class would, as unfortunately most of the theory in multivariable calculus require more sophisticated analysis than can be done in freshmen classes. So you could consider starting one of the 300-level sequences in the spring.</p>
<p>Thanks, feuxfollets. I’m not asking for myself, but for my son (Huntsman '16). He is very strong in math and is aiming for something math/stat/actuarial-related, the stuff that my banker and trader friends call “strat.” (Think Princeton’s ORFE.) He doesn’t want to cover material he’s already learned. (His HS is famously strong in math and science.) But he also doesn’t want to be overwhelmed by something like Harvard’s Math 55 for freshmen. Your advice is valuable and appreciated.</p>