With school ending soon and orientation approaching, I (probably along others) have questions about courses. I have already gone through ratemyprofessor.com and know what professors I want for my basics. I will be majoring in Computer Engineering and will be in the Honors College.
Should I take CH 101 or CH 117? (I am in IB and I took the second year of Chemistry, but not the first)
Any suggestions on what HU/L/FA elective to take? Any that might be beneficial for my major or just fun in general?
Are you entering with any AP/CLEP/etc credits to get you out of any of those electives/general ed classes? If so, which courses/categories do you still need to fulfill? That’s what I’d focus on. Are you sure that your IB Chem won’t exempt you from chemistry? Is CLEP a reasonable option for Chemistry?
I took IB Chem SL so Bama won’t accept the credit. I haven’t looked at CLEP. I thought I would want to take Chem in college for Computer Engineering. Do other courses build off it or should I try to CLEP out of it?
The credits I am entering with will get me out of English and 6 credits of History but that still leaves 3 credits of History and those HU/L/FA.
My son has same major and came in with the same credits. He hadn’t had Chem since his Soph year in HS so he had to take it at UA. If it were me, I would try to Clep out of it and if not, take it in the spring if possible. Fall seems to be a heavy weed out time. My son got a good prof and TA and had a fairly easy go of it compared to those who took it in the fall. As far as Honors versions of classes. we were told to take those if you had a great interest in the topic. Profs will sometimes latch on to some obscure topic and spend their time there. My son enjoys Physics so took the Honors version, hates Chem so took a good prof in the regular version.
As far as electives- he will be fulfilling one 3 hour HU class with an Honors study abroad trip for 2 weeks this summer (Germany). A fun way to fulfill that requirement! For the Fall he will be doing another Honors Humanities class- can’t remember which one. These are harder to get in as Freshmen (they fill up fast) so you may have to wait for Sophmore registration.
Don’t over load your first semester! There are so many things going on and adjustments to make. You will also get sick a lot from living in close quarters. My son had a nasty sinus infection during midterms and a bad case of influenza the week prior to and during finals for fall. Thankfully- he had a really light load and made it through.
Do you have any foreign language experience? Foreign language courses count as humanities and a lot of people have good luck on the CLEP for foreign languages even when they only take a few years in HS. Also my son didn’t take it, but I’ve heard lots of positives about the honor’s UH 210 - The Arts of Tuscaloosa and in the past there have been open seats for freshman in that class. The requirements of the course include going to a variety of local performances.
^^^I think it depends on the professor. My son hadn’t had chemistry since sophomore year of high school, and he wasn’t go to study for CLEP tests, so he had to take it a UA and did really well in it.
Also, it’s fine if you want to use foreign language credits to place out of humanities requirements, but many engineers don’t have a lot of room for humanities classes, and some kids really enjoy them. There are a lot of great offerings in UH 210–my son took a class on the films of Stanley Kubrick and loved it. Here’s a list of the Fall 2015 offerings: http://honors.ua.edu/academics/honors-courses/uh-fine-arts/uh-210/
(I’m going to assume the Kubrick professor didn’t draft the description, with that egregious spelling error!)
Now there’s a long discussion on Facebook (mostly among engineering parents) about how you should take courses you could CLEP because you can make great grades and cushion yourself against poor grades for more challenging courses later in your college career.
I would encourage all UA parents to continue to post on CC as well as on FB, to provide valuable advice to incoming students. (Ironic that this marks my 2000th post here!)
FWIW (and I also commented on the Facebook thread), I don’t believe the intent of the discussion on Facebook was to say not to use any CLEP or AP credit. There are times when it is a very good idea to do so. For example a student that does not intend to take higher level foreign language classes, should without a doubt, use any CLEP credit they receive. The Facebook discussion was a caution when registering not to take the most difficult courses that are available, just because you can. Students may face issues with adjusting/homesickness, roommates, time management, illnesses and many other hurdles that have been discussed both here and on Facebook. Having a first semester student jump into 300 level courses their first semester, just because they can use CLEP or AP, may not be the best idea. On the other hand, my son started his first semester in a 300 level Spanish class because we were very comfortable with that since he’d spent a summer living with a host family in Mexico during high school. I believe the purpose of the discussion was to know thy student and be realistic about expectations.
