<p>Helloo, I'm going to be a freshman (biomedical engineering) at USC this fall and I'm terrified of not knowing anything. Yes, I realize freshman usually don't know anything anyways, but I'm wondering if I'll be disadvantaged if I never took a robotics or engineering-related class in high school, only maybe IB chemphysbio/HL math.</p>
<p>What was your freshman year like?</p>
<p>I never took any of those kinds of classes in highschool. In fact, I left highschool at a pretty low math level. I decided to go back to school for engineering about 6 years later, spent a few semesters at my local CC getting all my math prereqs down (you really can’t take any engineering or required physics courses until you’re at least at calc 1 level), and went from there. Now I’m one week away from finishing DiffEq and have the first couple of semesters or my engineering programs courses done and I did great in all of them.</p>
<p>Moral of the story; I went into it knowing even less than you did and I am doing excellent in the program. Aside from the fact that you have to be at a certain math level to even start an engineering program, what you did in highschool has NOTHING to do with how you will do in college classes.</p>
<p>The only thing they will expect you to know is stuff from required prerequisites. So when you go into Engineering Physics 1, they are going to assume you don’t know jack about physics, but they’ll expect you to know Calc (whether you took it in highschool or college) since it is a prerequisite to the class (at least it was at my school). I don’t remember a damned thing from highschool physics or chemistry, but I did extremely well in those classes once I got to college. You’ll be fine, college is where you learn all the stuff, not highschool.</p>
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<p>You are already ahead of probably 70% of incoming freshmen then. Most high schools don’t even offer robotics or engineering-related classes.</p>
<p>Congratulations mojopin3! I’m going to be a sophomore this year at USC majoring in biomedical engineering too! :)</p>
<p>Anyway, you will not be disadvantaged in anyway. If anything, you might find that you actually excel in certain classes than other students. I never took a robotics class or engineering-related class and I did decently well both semesters.</p>
<p>thank you all very much! All the advice was really helpful, I can’t wait to start!
Thanks, again</p>
<p>I’ve finished half of my degree and nearly 2 months of an internship and I still don’t know anything about engineering.</p>
<p>^ You’re doing it wrong.</p>