I can’t imagine them being online. The vaccine rollout is starting to accept 16+ year olds in many states. Here in Atlanta the process seems to be going well with a lot of vaccine locations. Even the private HS my daughters attend is having vaccines for staff, parents, and immediate families. One of the colleges they are attending is giving vaccines on campus to students. There really shouldn’t be any reason to be online this Fall in my opinion.
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That is what I had assumed but the discussion on that thread indicates quite a few of the math and CS courses will be online? I will have him reach out to admissions. It does not make a lot of sense.
GT is also in the mix for my son. Could you share the name of the Facebook group you referred to? Thanks.
Your child should be able to go on their oscar or buzz port account and look at courses for the fall and how they are delivered. Summer is primarily/all online I think. Course delivery was not finalized until a couple of days ago so it is possible people were looking at outdated information.
That being said, this is a decision that will likely be made by the University System of Georgia which is in charge of all 27 public colleges and universities in Georgia and to my knowledge they have made no announcements yet.
They are giving vaccines at GT also and last I checked had vaccinated almost 10,000 members of the GT community. That being said, they were much more conservative with designating a class online than other USG colleges and even this spring when UGA has opened up tremendously GT is largely online. It is awful and I agree they should be open. My son has taken 4 semesters of online classes.
So I just looked at the course catalog and there are a number of math classes coded as remote syncronous which is online - not all of them but definitely a noticeable number. That is a very good question to ask. There is no reason at all they cannot be fully in the classroom.
Georgia Tech Current or Potential Parents is the name of the Facebook Group. The first post was 3/26 @ 16:28. I do not use Facebook too much so not sure how to give you the best way to find the discussion but I think you can find it this way. Scroll to the end of the thread for recent comments and you will see where some of the students mention courses being online.
The discussion indicates the kids did sign up via Oscar and this is where many noted the math and CS courses were online.
Thank you! I will look it up.
Additional information for your research… we received this email on 3/16.
*The following message was sent from the Office of the Provost to the Georgia Tech community on March 9, 2021 regarding plans for course delivery for the fall semester. *
- Dear Georgia Tech Faculty, Staff, and Students:*
By now you may have seen President Cabrera’s March 5 message to the campus about our plans to return to fully on-campus learning for Fall 2021.
We are very grateful to our Fall 2021 Planning Team of faculty, staff, and students who recently submitted a recommended fall plan to senior leadership that reflects broad community input.
Based on guidance from the Georgia Department of Public Health, we intend to resume a “normal” fall schedule. In other words, the Fall 2021 plan is designed to be very similar to Fall 2019.
Instructional delivery will include increased residential courses, very limited fully remote offerings, many of which were already underway before the pandemic, and the leveraging of technology-enhanced learning that takes advantage of the innovations developed before and during the pandemic.
We are very proud of the entire Tech community over the past year in adapting teaching, research, student services, student life, and campus operations to continue serving our community while working to ensure safety during the pandemic.
We are planning to return to normal occupancy of residence halls, classrooms, labs, and other facilities with more on-campus services and resources for students, all within safety protocols. We have working groups for every aspect of our return and are coordinating plans, being mindful of upcoming deadlines, details that need to be worked out, and needed flexibilities. We will continue to share updates as they are available.
Over the past year, our comprehensive approach to the coronavirus pandemic has allowed us to continue to offer a quality education while focusing on the safety of our entire community. Through an asymptomatic surveillance testing program developed by the people of Georgia Tech, masking, social distancing, and special cleaning protocols we have been able to contain Covid-19 cases within our community and offer an environment where we believe we had no known virus spread in the classroom.
We are encouraged by the increasing availability of Covid-19 vaccines and distribution on campus, and believe most faculty, staff, and students will have the opportunity to get a vaccine before fall semester begins.
We have come a long way since a year ago this month, when we converted all of our classes, programs, and services throughout the Institute to remote delivery over a two-week period. Through the incredible creativity and commitment of faculty, staff, and students we were able to design and implement innovative solutions as we powered through this pandemic.
It is not over, but we have reason for optimism and hope as we work toward recreating the living/learning experience for which Georgia Tech is so well known.
Take care,
Steve McLaughlin, Provost
Georgia Tech
I saw that - it is the 4th paragraph that is concerning me 
This seems a clarification of their earlier statement that Fall 2021 will be like Fall 2019. UF had some intro courses online even pre Covid. I am sure it is a way to expand student numbers since those classes tend to be in high demand with finite class and professor resources. UF also cannot house all freshmen on campus. Hope GT is not moving in that direction!
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Clearly GT can do what they please, I just wish they would be very transparent about their plans. The Facebook discussion I referenced indicated they have been experimenting in math and CS with having lectures online and recitations in person. If that is the way they want to instruct going forward, that is ok, just be clear about it so the kids can choose with all the facts.
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No.
Interesting point. When I was in college the lower level math classes were always self taught and the students would then just go in to take tests for each unit. The problem with that methodology of course is these are the at-risk students and they are the ones that needed the most help and thereby had the most trouble in those courses and ultimately bombed in many cases.
A lot of schools do offer online classes for some basic liberal arts courses that kids can take at their own pace as they’ve always had those, but if GT is doing online classes for things like Calculus or CS etc. so they can front load the entering freshman classes I wonder if they do that also as sort of a weed out. I just heard that Purdue admits a huge number of students into their FYE program but due to the rigor of the program many don’t last in it and ultimately leave or transfer into other majors. This could be the same kind of thing.
Definitely something to consider as kids like mine who is waitlisted and will need to be wrapping of his final decision on which waitlists he stays on in the upcoming weeks. Although I guess it also depends which courses are online because with AP credit maybe some of these are irrelevant. Does anyone know the courses?
Your son can login to Oscar and see. Many kids at Tech place out of calculus. I’m not sure it is all sections but I did see that differential equations and linear algebra are remote at least in some sections, so not just lowest level math. The studio/recitations with the TA are in person.
DS was able to look at the courses offered by GT for the Fall semester and there are numerous Linear Algebra courses (10 or more it seemed) and all of the lectures were online with the recitations being in-person. I think this held true for some of the other beginning math courses too. It did seem that upper level math courses were in person. He scanned the CS courses and found that most were in-person.
He is concerned that GT may continue to have more and more of the CS and Math courses online and it has definitely resulted in him looking more closely at some of the other schools where he has been admitted already. Additionally, he sent an email requesting clarification to someone at GT (not sure if math dept or admissions). He said he felt if enough pushed back on this that maybe GT would reconsider. Definitely a disappointing development…
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Thanks! I should’ve known you’d know! :). I will need to check it out. He took Calc 3 (MVC) last semester for DE and is in Linear now but I would definitely have him retake both regardless. My daughter’s school wouldn’t accept the Calc 3 DE and she didn’t want to deal with the placement exam but it turned out to be a good thing because she said it went into way more depth than her high school class. And LA at our school I’m not even sure what they really do but no way near enough for college other than some prep I think.
Out of interest, why would you want your son to retake the courses if he has taken them already? We are in a somewhat worse situation as DS has taken MVC at high school and was able to audit Linear Algebra at a local LAC (i.e., he has no DE credit).
If he goes to GT, he is thinking to see if he can “test out” of these courses so as not to repeat the info. Honestly the best case scenario is that he has to retake both courses as the level at GT far exceeds what he has learned already, but I would hate for him to repeat the info if he knows it already and equally hate having to pay in addition.
Just wondering why you plan to default to retaking. Thanks.
That’s a good question, but I think it’s an individual decision for everyone. In our case, this is my 4th (and thankfully last) kid so we’ve kind of become familiar with what are good classes to retake and which ones aren’t necessary. For instance, he won’t be retaking any of the AP science courses he’s had. If he were in Mechanical Engineering or some other aspect of Engineering, then perhaps different story, same with Chemical Engineering and AP Chem. But since he’s going into CS, he would retake the Calc 3 and his 2 CS courses he already has college credit for. What we’ve learned along the way is that schools go into a lot more depth in certain coursework than the high schools do or even small universities where dual credit is provided, not to mention the quality of the instructors at some of the universities can be lacking as well.
Math is a needed skill for many of the upper level math courses he will need and for the high level Computer Science courses and some of other requirements. For Computer Science since it’s his major he wants to make sure he learns everything in the course because every college teaches it differently and the material may be different. My daughter for instance, also retook the AP CS course equivalent and the course had nothing to do with what she learned in the AP CS course in high school. So it in fact, wasn’t an equivalent course. By taking it with everyone else, it put her on par with them in being exposed to the same material.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with retaking something. If a student is bored or does feel like they know it all, they can certainly move up a level. But, it’s a much worse situation for a student who is in a higher level and finds they weren’t taught something in a high school or DE course that everyone else in their class was taught at this particular university, or taught a certain way.
None of my kids took AP classes or exams to get out of classes or to graduate early so the tuition isn’t really a factor. We pay a flat rate for being full time students either way. I have one who just takes extra classes for self interest and another who it has allowed to drop classes if she doesn’t like and she’s able to double major as well as minor. But the one thing I won’t have my kids do is graduate early so as odd as this sounds, I’m happy to pay for them to retake the class after taking it in high school, especially to avoid having to retake it in college twice, as some kids have to do and because GT is such a grind.
ETA: I should clarify that he is taking his AP Calc BC credits wherever he can. It’s the Calc 3 dual credit course and the CS courses (AP and DE) he would retake and many schools, especially private won’t take it anyway.
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Test out if he can. Math (and physics 1 and 2) at GT are pretty brutal. I have a sophomore at Georgia Tech who is studying civil engineering. He made the mistake of re-taking physics 1 even though he got a 5 on the AP exam. He got an A but it was very hard fought and very much in doubt up until the last second😂. Take the credits would be my vote. GT is hard enough without retaking classes. I think current students would have the same advice.
You make a good point about higher level classes related to his major. We were not in that position as the only math class he had credit for was BC Calc. When he did a camp at NC State, the engineering professor that taught part of the camp said in his parent presentation he recommended retaking classes like Calc for a grade boosting A. That won’t happen at Georgia Tech!