<p>My son has listed Vanderbilt as his 1st choice of schools. My question is how good is the quality of instruction for engineering majors?</p>
<p>From a parent's perspective a good school would be one where:</p>
<p>1) The teachers actually teach the courses instead of spending time doing research in hopes of getting govt. grant money. </p>
<p>1a) Are there TAs? If so what do they do? How many students are in the typical Calculus I class for instance. If the answer is 200, maybe he should keep looking. If the answer is less than 40, keep talking. What is the average class size?</p>
<p>2.) Are teachers available for outside class help? Is there a math lab?</p>
<p>3.) How does the quality of instruction compare with what you were used to in High School?</p>
<p>If I'm paying $43k a year, I want my son to receive to receive better instruction than he can get at a public university for 1/4 the money.</p>
<p>I'm currently a sophomore in engineering. I'll be glad to answer your questions.
1,1a) yes! no ta's teach courses except for labs. There are some teachers who are invovled in research, but are not so absorbed that office hours are hard to get into. Don't know about calc 1. My calc 2 had around 40. Cal 3, which is required for engineering majors had around 20. Diffy Q, the course I'm in now( also required for engineering), has 11. Numbers tend to drop in the higher divisions simply because 1. people drop out of engineering, 2. A&S people don't want to take anything higher than calc 2 or 3. </p>
<p>2)Teachers are available for help. There is no math lab. Accelerated Cal 1 and 2 have an extra credit hour that is recitation. It's basically a help session though</p>
<p>3.) It was better than my high school. However, I felt that I was prepared.</p>
<p>I must agree with the other poster on here. I am a freshman and can talk from my own experience and my roomate's. My roomate is int he general Calc I class and I am int he accelerate Cal 2 class. Professors are hit or mis in terms of understandability, but if you happen across a good one, they not only help you butbecome valuable assests in the course of the semester. Most students are just intimidated by their professors and refuse to appraoch them, but for the most part they are readily accesbile during pre-determined office hours or by appointment. </p>
<p>The classes for calculus are very small, probably no more than 30 at the most in a class; the rooms are too small for anything larger! Sometimes there are goof balls that disrupt class by reading papers or playing on their computers, but they usually drop the class after they get a letter sent home about their failing status in the class.</p>
<p>As a freshman in engineer, es 101 will be one of your son's favorite classes. It is basically a seminar that meets for one hour a week and you just discuss topics of interest with professors in a very informal system so you cang et to know their passions. also a general overview class called ES 140 is mandatory for all freshman engineers during the first semester so that they can be introduced to excel, matlab, and two forms of engineering they feel they would like to study.</p>
<p>All of the se programs though, depend on the professor you get. There are definetly some professors who are complete bags of crap and are on tenure, so they decide to bash all other departments in engineering. Yes, this is true, I dropped from this professor's module in ES 140. Also, ratemyprofessor.com is a great place to go look for professor rating before selecting classes.</p>
<p>There are no such things as "math labs" to my knowledge. There isn't really any experimenting that can be done with math except number research and that can be done i believe in cubicles with a laptop. But I am just guessing there. there are recitations for accelerated calculus which help a lot and also, in my class at least, provide the forum through which our professor makes us take quizzes which will total about the same value as a test by the end of the semester.</p>
<p>Also, nobody can compare to ym high school math teacher who had been teaching calculus for 25 years and is one of the best in my state. So any reiview of teaching to high school would be heavily biased.</p>
<p>Thanks guys. This helps a lot and you answers were for the most part what I was looking for.</p>
<p>Regarding Math Lab, I thought this term was universal, but obviously from your replies it is not. What I mean by "Math Lab" is a place where you can go to receive assistance with your math homework? In my day is was located in the computer lab and was a drop in center where the school paid other students to help anyone who showed up and asked for help with math? It wasn't really much good for the advanced courses such as diffy-q but it usually was fine for everything up to and including pre-calc.</p>
<p>well, there are office hours and the teachers are accessible.</p>
<p>anyways, the engineering school offers help sessions for core math classes. So yes, there are places where one can go to receive assistance. Office hours are definitely the more preferred, though.</p>