Desired level of math for first year computer science students

College Majors Math/Computer Science Majors
1

I enjoy math, i’m just not the best at it.

I took all required math courses up to pre-calc my senior year in high school, and never received anything lower than a C.

However my ACT sub score for math puts me into college algebra (I took the placement test for my school but didnt do so hot on it), So it appears that my first year math class will be college algebra.

How far will that set me back if I want to be a computer science major?

2

Are you a college student or HS student? Most first year CS majors start our with Calc1 and 2.

3

Will be a college freshman in the fall.

4

Most schools have a 4 year plan for the required courses for each major. What are the math requirements for CS at your college? If you start with Algebra, you probably have to retake Pre-calc before jumping into Calc so it will probably put you 1 year behind based on my son’s CS curriculum at his college.

5

Try pulling up the bachelor’s of computer science degree plan for your school. This should be easy to find by either browsing your university’s website or typing " (‘school name’) bachelors of computer science degree plan" into google. I say this because the amount you are pushed back by starting at college algebra will be different at one institution than another.

When you see the list of courses on the degree plan, you need to make note of the pre-requisites.

Some things to look into:

  1. What is the math sequence for someone starting at College Algebra at your institution?
  2. Will the college algebra through pre-calc courses still be able to go anywhere towards your degree? Do they work as elective credits to get towards your 120ish credits needed to graduate?
  3. Are there any math courses that are a pre-req for computer science courses? For example, my school has Discrete Mathematics as a pre-req for many computer science courses. Discrete Mathematics has calculus as a pre-req. If your school has this or something similar, then you may run into a situation where you cannot take any computer science courses during, say your second or third semester because you won’t have Discrete Mathematics completed by then (just an example).

The answer to those questions are more institution specific and some of those questions can be answered from pulling up the degree plan as well as the undergraduate catalog. If the college algebra-pre-calc sequence can count as electives, then there is a decent chance you can graduate in four years. What might happen is you will get slowed down initially on your computer science courses because of not having the math yet. In that situation you would likely be taking many of the core curriculum courses while doing math and whatever CS courses you have the pre-reqs for. Then, the last two years you might be loading up on CS courses to account for the fact that you were initially slowed down on CS courses by not having the math. Again, this is just an example and would depend on your institution. Best of luck!