<p>Few Course 20 classes rely on 8.02 as a pre-req, if you want to use that as an indication.</p>
<p>You need to finish 8.02 by first semester sophomore year to be Course 20 - but you don't need to complete additional physics =D.</p>
<p>Can you explain to me what is the advandage to get sophomore standing ? I am asking the question for my son. Can you graduate in three years ?</p>
<p>Indeed you can (though I don't believe many people do).</p>
<p>Probably the main advantages to sophomore standing are that students can declare their major a semester early (and therefore get a faculty advisor in their chosen department) and that students can take more than the 57 units freshmen are allowed to take second semester.</p>
<p>Graduating in three years isn't permitted or "more possible" just because you take sophomore standing. Those who can graduate in three years, for the most part, can graduate in three years whether or not they take sophomore standing. Those who can graduate in three years are just more likely to have been offered sophomore standing because they are ahead in their classes.</p>
<p>Mollie got the advantages right, though in addition to getting a faculty advisor, you also start receiving notices from your department about activities, events, internship opportunities, etc. and are basically formally integrated into your community of fellow Course [insert #] majors sooner.</p>
<p>Incidentally, neither my freshman advisor nor my faculty advisor thought the credit limitlessness that comes with sophomore standing should play any major role in deciding whether or not to take up the offer.</p>
<p>Disadvantages: You no longer have "No Record". I know people who turned down sophomore standing because they didn't want to lose that =D.</p>
<p>
Incidentally, neither my freshman advisor nor my faculty advisor thought the credit limitlessness that comes with sophomore standing should play any major role in deciding whether or not to take up the offer.
i have seen the opposite: most of those who elected sophomore standing, myself included, did it primarily to break the credit limit. i have no intention of graduating early. i just wanted to take more classes</p>
<p>
If you're talking course 8 major, 8.02 comes up in later courses far more than 8.01. Even the 8.01 way of using physical intuition to solve problems kinda becomes irrelevant when the quantum sequence starts.
wait, what? um...</p>
<p>first, the quantum sequence here, like most undergraduate quantum sequences, constructs quantum mechanics from classical mechanics via second quantization. hamiltonians aren't just functional operators, y'know. even more exotic quantization schemes fundamentally rely on this intuition (some, such as the path integral formulation, rely on classical mechanics even more than second quantization).</p>
<p>second, the connection is even deeper in other fields of modern physics. for example, the einstein-hilbert action (i repeat, ACTION) is a crown jewel of general relativity, and astrophysics is almost completely reliant on classical mechanics for their models (globular clusters = boltzmann gas, anyone?). further examples abound.</p>
<p>if anything, 8.01 ideas are much more important than 8.02 in the grand scheme of things. i've always thought of electromagnetism as just being an extension of classical mechanics with a few subtle twists. most dramatic way of seeing this: after you define the electromagnetic stress-energy tensor, describing electromagnetism can be done entirely by means of classical mechanics.</p>
<p>my advice to original poster: i'm usually an advocate of going full speed ahead as fast as you can (i started with 8.05 and 8.06 as a freshman, i'm taking junior lab as a sophomore, etc.), but if you don't know mechanics well, that is a show-stopper. seriously: if you do not feel comfortable with classical mechanics, you will have huuuuuge problems later on as a physics major. think twice before skipping out on 8.012. it's a great class, and along with 8.09, it will form the foundation of your physics knowledge, and help you begin to build the ever-elusive, but oh-so-crucial sense of "physical intuition."</p>
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</p>
<p>i have seen the opposite: most of those who elected sophomore standing, myself included, did it primarily to break the credit limit. i have no intention of graduating early. i just wanted to take more classes
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</p>
<p>Note I didn't say why students choose to take sophomore standing but rather what advisors say shouldn't be such an influential consideration. Of course a majority of students take sophomore standing for the removed credit limit. But a majority of (good, in my opinion) advisors also bring up that trying to exceed the credit limit isn't advisable for any freshman (though, of course, there is the occasional student who can handle a larger workload) and, as such, shouldn't be the goal when considering whether to accept a sophomore standing offer.</p>
<p>Then, of course, students don't listen. :)</p>
<p>iostream-</p>
<p>Look, we're not arguing about anything here except the way we choose to give advice. Your advice is full of hamiltonians and hilbert spaces and noninteracting electron clouds, so it appeals to a certain sensibility, and mine tends to try to be as practical for the average MIT student as possible. Which is why I specifically said "8.01" as opposed to "classical mechanics" in my original response. I'm not here to postulate about the interconnectedness and interdependence of the various fields of physics, this is a complicated time-dependent problem that I am loathe to tackle. Here, I hope merely to advise a freshman on the usefulness of of a particular class. And come on, let's be frank. You learn nothing about actions or hamiltonians or lagrangians in 8.01 (even in 8.012, they weren't mentioned, and we glossed over tensors and tensor calculus in half of one lecture -lol). Naturally, I agree that classical mechanics, as much as some may scorn it, is the root of physics today, but I don't necessarily think anyone is at a disadvantage in further physics (at MIT) without having -repeated- introductory classical mechanics at the college level if adequate preparation is had in high school. That's for the student to judge him/herself. </p>
<p>8.09 is of course another story. Now, if we were required to take 8.09 equivalent of classical mechanics pre-quantum, that could be useful in gaining a bigger picture understanding of what the hell we're doing. For some reason, I learned 8.022 poorly, I did fine in the class but I went on and forgot everything, and when charged particles in EM fields staged a hostile takeover of 8.06, I didnt feel as comfortable as I ought to have. And that's not to mention the 3/4 a semester we spent in 8.05 talking about the spin of the electron and the magnetic moment generated interaction with various internal and external fields. In 8.04 and 8.044, Curie's law comes up more than once or twice, and since 8.022 my year did not even touch on magnetization, there was a lot of resulting confusion and self-learning in those classes.</p>
<p>It could just be that I learned 8.012 material far more solidly than I learned 8.022 material, and therefore I did not notice as much when 8.01 came up, as it was second nature or something to me. Regardless, I figure my own experience is a good prototype for the physics sequence here- since I had no prior physics background from high school to entangle with what I've learned at MIT; and since I have taken all the intro classes, there's no guess work on my part as to what the syllabus contains. </p>
<p>But there's no point in going on. Clearly the moral of the story is having a strong background in physics is important for further study at MIT and moreoever that talking about physics makes pebbles and iostream feel very important. Personally, I dont care how you go about attaining this recommended background, I don't think iostream does either. So yeah, we're on the same side here, iostream. We were even in the same classes.</p>
<p>haha, agreed. we should stop the technical discussion here. sorry if i seemed aggressive or snippy. 'twas a 3AM knee-jerk reaction.</p>
<p>in any case, original poster, our advice is indeed consistent.</p>
<p>If the OP wants serious/non-general advice he should give us more information about himself. What physics have you taken? How confident are you, your math background, etc.</p>
<p>Cause there's nothing worse than advice that doesn't pertain to you. </p>
<p>iostream- have you taken both 8.09 and GR as well freshman year? If so, what did you think of it/them? I'm not sure if I'll be bored taking 8.07 and 8.09 at the same time.</p>
<p>also, some people are really out there. you're definitely out there man. way ahead of the curve.</p>
<p>I'm confident in my math and physics ability, but I'm considering majoring in physics, and I know my high school physics backround (mostly self-taught) does not have the rigor of college, much less MIT. That said, I got 5's in Calc AB and BC as well as the two AP Physics exams. I've completed (and aced) several local college advanced math courses as well. For me, I think it comes down to choosing between 8.012 and 8.022 for Fall semester. Is this a decision that is made with my advisor during Orientation?</p>
<p>Your advisor has to approve of your class choices, yes, and she will hopefully give you feedback about appropriate course choosing.</p>
<p>Well, if it helps or something, 8.012 is in my mind one of the best classes I've taken here. 8.022 doesn't really compare for me.</p>
<p>
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Is this a decision that is made with my advisor during Orientation?
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This is most likely a decision that will be made with upperclassmen during orientation. :) Upperclassmen are often a more useful resource than advisors when it comes to course choice.</p>
<p>pebbles: i have taken neither of those classes, but i plan to take both next year. Landau and Lifschitz volume 1 is great, but it's probably not everything i need to know. as for GR, i'm just a dabbler (won a copy of MTW at physics camp, flipped through it for fun). i definitely don't know many of the fine points of that theory.</p>
<p>Question: should I take 8.012?
My friend told me that the 8.012/8.022 series is really worth taking, but I'm not sure if I'd be able to handle it. Despite having taken AP physics C, I don't actually know any physics. However, it does sound really interesting, and I like theory, based on the math class I took this year (apparently, kind of equivalent to 18.014, we used Spivak's Calculus).
Oh, and I'm probably going to major in course X, so I really don't want to have to take 8.01 second semester if I fail 8.012.</p>
<p>i would say if your math diagnostic is high enough you should start in 8.012 and drop it after the first test or whatever if you are really struggling. it's a super cool class and was worth it for me (basically no prior physics experience).</p>
<p>If you know for certain you will be taking 8.01X and not be passing out of it, I would advise going ahead with 8.012. You are under pass/no record, and my personal opinion is that you should be taking advantage of that. A) You'll feel much better barely passing a "difficult" class than if you had (theoretically) barely passed an "easy" class, and B) it's much easier to drop to a lower class if you can't even barely pass a "difficult" class than it is to move up from an "easy" class that doesn't challenge you at all.</p>
<p>You also seen genuinely interested in physics (unlike me with math when I took 18.022 pass/no record), which is a plus.</p>