<p>My plans - attend a community college for two years, earn my associates in engineering, transfer to Rutgers and finish my BA in engineering there.</p>
<p>So my engineering curriculum at my community college will consist of Chem I, Calc I, and Physics I in conjunction with two other class (I believe drafting and English composition). This seems like suicide and looking at my other semesters the same trend holds for all four years.</p>
<p>Do I have any alternatives to this type of schedule and still end up finishing in a 4-5 year time frame? Sorry if the questions is a little stupid, I'm just curious to know. I'm not trying to doubt myself but thinking about it now, this seems like it's going to be REALLY HARD studying for all of this and managing my personal time.</p>
Not knowing anything in particular about either school, this seems reasonable. Are you actually hoping to get a BA or did you mean a BS?</p>
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Assuming that you are describing your first semester, that looks like 15-17 credit-hours, which is pretty typical for engineering. If this looks like suicide then I think you are in trouble unless there are some extenuating circumstances (i.e., job, children, illness, etc.).</p>
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Of course! You can certainly take classes over the summer and extend by a year if you really need to reduce the courseload - the exact details will depend on the course offerings at the two schools. Bear in mind that this will come at the cost of increased tuition but little or no increased financial aid. Or you can switch to another major, but bear in mind that most degrees will still require a similar number of classes even if the actual content is easier.</p>
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Well, I don’t know anything about you or your preparation, but I DO know that you haven’t actually started the coursework yet, so it seems that you are getting ahead of yourself. College is supposed to be hard, and engineering harder than most, but despite that most students do all right and still manage to take care of their personal needs and even have some fun on the side - if they can do it, is there a reason you cannot?</p>
<p>The typical engineering curriculum isn’t that difficult if you are simply trying to earn a degree. However, if you want to achieve a high GPA and actually learn the material it is quite difficult. I will give you the same advice I’ve given many prospective engineering students- start studying now! Do NOT wait for the first day of class to begin the material. You should email the course instructor immediately and obtain a copy of the syllabus. Use the syllabus as your guide over the summer or winter break to move forward towards learning the material. Use websites like “yourotherteacher” or “tutorcircle” for inexpensive tutoring services if you find the material difficult. I have taken up to 10 classes in one semester and you should never consider such insanity. Pace yourself, stay ahead of the lecture material and do your best. When you mess up on a test or homework don’t get down on yourself- keep your mind in the game.</p>
Not so much the credit hours, mainly the difficulty of the classes all in one semester.</p>
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I was considering taking the English comp classes over the summer, maybe Drafting during a break because it seems like a class I can run through rather quickly. Calc, Physics and Chem I don’t think I could do over the summer, the college offers a 5 week course and that (I think) is too fast for me.</p>
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<p>I’m sure I could but I don’t really have any perspective on the matter so I’m just trying to make sure I’m ready for all of this, I don’t know any engineers (Actually I lied, I know of one so maybe I can ask him). I suppose this post also acts as a gateway to put things into perspective for me.</p>
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<p>Transferring over to Rutgers will require a high GPA so I would really like to learn the material and advance, I want to work for a successful company design all sorts of things. I’ve already asked my Pre-Calc teacher for her class notes.</p>
<p>She is giving me notes for Calculus I, II and III. I will begin studying Calculus I over the summer to familiarize myself with the material, unfortunately I’ve never taken Physics and have no teacher resources to take advantage of so I plan on simply buying textbooks and teaching it to myself (attempting to).</p>
<p>I’ll certainly check out those website, thank you so much. I’ve been bookmarking tons of useful sites to use as guides over the summer.</p>
This is still pretty typical for engineering. Realize that the sizable majority of classes in an engineering major will be technical or scientific courses, so a semester with 3-4 such classes is just an ordinary semester. I just looked at my old transcripts and could not find any semesters where I took less than 3 tech courses.</p>
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I would not usually recommend taking major courses over the summer - it is important that you learn the material, and summer courses are often taught by grad students or more junior faculty. I took one major course over the summer, did very well by summer standards, but was really struggling later on compared to students who took it with the regular instructor during the fall/spring semesters.</p>
<p>So take English over the summer if you want, but remember that a NON-technical course can sometimes help to break the monotony of equation after equation after equation.</p>
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Just remember to focus on learning the material, rather than just passing the test. I have seen good test-takers (and good finders of homework answers on the web) ace their first year or two and then fall into mediocrity or oblivion because they were now being asked to use material that they never really learned in the first place.</p>
<p>Um, be careful that everything will transfer the way you hope it will. Usually an “engineering technology” degree from a 2-year college, while not a worthless degree, has almost no overlap with an “engineering” degree from a 4-year university. I don’t know anything about the schools you plan to go to, but I started at a CC and just studied all of my math, physics, and chemistry prereqs (the local CC has more math classes than normal for a CC, as part of a transfer program with the local 4-year university for engineers). I did <em>not</em> complete a degree at the CC, but I was there for a few years getting a bunch of credits. Then I transferred over. Had I taken one of the “engineering technology” programs at the CC, there wouldn’t have been much I could have transferred over to an engineering degree, they are different types of programs.</p>