<p>I'll be starting college this fall as an Electrical Engineering major and here is my schedule for the first semester:</p>
<p>Monday: Calculus I
Tuesday: MicroEconomics, English, Computer Science I
Wednesday: Computer Science I, Calculus I
Thursday: MicroEconomics, English, Engineering Fundamentals</p>
<p>16 Credits total.
My question is, is this too much for the first semester? Should I take just 4 classes?</p>
<p>That looks really easy for an engineering schedule. I’d be surprised if you could take any fewer classes and graduate on time.</p>
<p>yea my engineering schedule was pretty well packed solid monday through friday</p>
<p>I need 120 credits to graduate, so that’s 15 credits per semester…</p>
<p>Do whatever the recommended schedule is for your major at your school.</p>
<p>The schedule that I posted is the recommended schedule. Five courses in the first semester is the norm.</p>
<p>chuy: Assuming you’re a VT student, I looked at VT’s freshman schedule, and it actually required less credits during the first semester.</p>
<p>You usually can’t go wrong with the recommended schedule especially for first semester freshman year. It probably means most students are able to get by with it and unless you have some special circumstances, I don’t see why you should stray from it.</p>
<p>If you take too many courses, you may overload yourself.</p>
<p>If you don’t take enough, you may find yourself having problems graduating on time. Depending on the series of prerequisites and when courses are offered, you might be delayed for one or two semesters if things don’t work out right. </p>
<p>As they say… if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.</p>
<p>Are those classes really long? The reason I ask is because you only meet up twice a week, which is less than what I do for my engineering schedule. For a Freshman, I think its definitely necessary to adapt and not overload yourself in classes.</p>
<p>I should have mentioned that all those classes are 2-3 hours long. I think I would rather have long classes on 1-2 days in the week rather than short classes on 3-4 days.</p>
<p>that looks like a very easy 1st engineering semester. surprised you’re not taking chem or physics 1st semester. we had 6 credits of each in 1st year.</p>
<p>My college somewhat recommended 12 units/credits for first time freshman so that you can have some time to get a feel for the school, atmosphere, etc. </p>
<p>I would have taken 15 units had I known I could. Do this. Go with what you have now.</p>
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<p>Introductory programming classes can be difficult and a lot of work if you are new to the subject. Programming classes are definitely more time-consuming than chemistry or physics.</p>
<p>i took intro c++ in 1st year and it was easy as hell and I don’t know anything about computing. although chem and physics were easy as well. Chem moreso than physics. Stuff doesn’t really get hard until 3rd year anyway.</p>
<p>but seriously, english AND econ in 1st year engineering in the same semester? He only has 2 science/engineering courses. engineering fundamentals, I think I took something similar. joke.</p>
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<p>You (albeit unknowingly) brought up a good point. Course difficulty really depends on what school you are at. The intro programming course I took was the weedout course in my department.</p>
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<p>Not really. By the way, what school do you go to?</p>
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<p>The weedout courses in 1st year here are probably statics and dynamics; the 2 first year mechanics courses. The calc courses are also pretty brutal for most people. They’re taught more like honour’s math.</p>
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<p>u of alberta. and yeah it’s a joke. 1st year engineering should be intro science, not liberal arts. For what it’s worth, there are professors here who used to teach at MIT, berkeley, etc. who say that our engg curriculum is comparable. You probably don’t know the school, but it’s a tough engineering school.</p>
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<p>You really shouldn’t be a snob. </p>
<p>Here, I’ll try my hand at it. Was the intro programming course for CS majors? If it wasn’t, then probably it was made easier for the engineering students.</p>
<p>actually they wouldn’t let me take the intro CS course for credit because it’s much easier.</p>
<p>well, I guess there are 2 intro CS courses. the other one is java which is comparable difficulty. covers most of the same stuff, except in java instead of C++.</p>
<p>Wait what? Explain.</p>
<p>my bad, I just checked and that course is for math majors, not CS majors. CS majors just take the course on java 1st semester.</p>
<p>That isn’t helping my case though . . . Java is an easier language than C++. It hides a lot of stuff from the programmer. </p>
<p>I bet that the CS major class talked more about data structures and searching/sorting algorithms than the engineering one though.</p>