<p>Hi olliie,
This is my second quarter at Drexel. They put me on vacation this summer, but I want to take classes. Do you think I can take classes without being charged? I transfered here as a pre-junior. I just want to take more classes before my first co-op starts in the fall.
Thanks</p>
<p>@ohuynh</p>
<p>That would be a good question for your advisor, but as far as I know: yes, they would charge you extra. I had a friend who took classes the summer of her freshman year and had to pay extra so that’s where my guess comes from. But you should ask your advisor just to check.</p>
<p>Hey olliie, nice of you to be answering questions here!
The big decision right now is picking a residence hall. I am non-honors CompSci student, and have visited a few of the dorms: Myers, Kelly and tower. To me Kelly seemed nicer than Myers, but I heard that majors are often grouped together. This seems like it would cluster certain ‘kinds’ of people with each other (ie. IT nerds and Com/Arts major divisions). The question is, what are the individual impressions and differences in social atmosphere between Kelly and Myers. And is the learning community (iSchool in particular) worth participating in?</p>
<p>~iSchool is only at Myers this year from what I read, so I have trouble deciding between those two halls :P</p>
<p>@Zamiel</p>
<p>Right, so I don’t know how the “clustering together” works but if I remember correctly there was an option on the housing application, something like, “I would like my roommate to be of the same major.” I didn’t check this, ended up on a floor for some reason with a lot of Biomed students, but it was the Honors dorm so I mean it was fine.</p>
<p>As far as atmosphere between Kelly and Myers… Honestly, I’ve never even been in Kelly, as far as I know it’s your regular average dorm. Everyone seems to like Myers though. Since it’s smaller (only three floors), I think it tends to have a closer like neighbor-friendly community, plus it’s usually mostly iSchool and Engineering students placed there because of the learning community thing. I had a few iSchool friends who were all in Myers, they seemed to cluster together, form their own little group of friends, do homework together, go to lunch together, etc. So I mean, it’s good for that. Personally though… I like all types of people. I don’t mind.</p>
<p>Anyway, there is the fact that CompSci (CS) != iSchool. So your homework would more match the Engineering students and you would have less in common with the iSchool IS/IT majors who are taking INFO classes and all. But iSchool students are still tech-y people, just more maybe… “business-oriented” rather than “let’s build a robot out of legos!Engineering” oriented. </p>
<p>I feel like I insulted a lot of people just there.</p>
<p>It’s fine. If you like the sound of the learning community, I’d say go for it. Myers sounds like a fun place. But I mean, if you’re looking for um the… “college dorm experience” like… Calhoun (Calhood they call it) is more of a… Okay, the one time I’ve been in there like twenty people were sitting in the hall chilling and I think someone was rolling around on a longboard? Idk. Towers is ok too. I just really don’t know anything about Kelly…</p>
<p>Also, CS <3 Ask me anything about the CS program! I’m like an honorary CS student T_T</p>
<p>Ahah, I see. So with regards to the learning community, as I understand it, the Engineering LC does more hands-on stuff while iSchool is the “business/data” end of the techy spectrum. Are there any particular perks that you know about - kind of like the iSchool having its own building for hanging out, studying and printing for free in (from what I could find about it)?</p>
<p>Another quick question, about dining plans. Which do people seem to prefer, blue or gold? :D</p>
<p>Oh it’s not the learning community per say, but it’s the curriculum/courses/major/program. But yeah, in general the College of Engineering is more… engineering and the iSchool (full name: College of Information Science and Technology) is more… Information Science and Technology. xD</p>
<p>I’m actually a Software Engineering student registered in the iSchool (half of us are iSchool, the other half is College of Engineering… it’s a long story), so yeah the perks are:
- iCommons: free unlimited printing/very nice computer lab to study/hang out. The CS lab has free printing too, but the iCommons is super fast and in my opinion is more reliable.
- Great advisors – there’s only 2.5 undergrad majors and ~60 undergrads/year in the iSchool and the academic advisors are all very nice, competent people (which isn’t true for all advisors everywhere). So that’s really good.
- Lots of free food. There’s pretty often faculty meetings or speaker events in the basement/outside/everywhere. Afterwards instead of throwing the food out you can sneak down there, pile a plate, and so grab a free lunch. Plus the iSchool staff loves to host little “Welcome Back!” snack bars in the beginning of most terms, in the beginning of this year there was a Fall Fest and cute little party for a retiring teacher. Free food and trinkets to give away, anyway.
- Speaking of parties, the Alumni Garden in front of the iSchool is beautiful. Like, the most green/plants you will see anywhere on campus. Very nice to sit outside at.
- Lots of money, generally. I don’t know. I got a scholarship randomly this year from an iSchool alum, and in general because the iSchool is very reputable in Information Science/Library Science research/grad programs and they in general have more money to spend than some of the other schools who may have thousands of students to support.
- Your freshman UNIV 101 class has pizza. Every week. =D No other college does that for you!</p>
<p>But that’s just my opinion. College of Engineering is for… engineers of course. There’s a lot of engineers here. A lot. And they have their own events, definitely. But the iSchool is like a college within a university. Idk, it’s just a nice little community.</p>
<p>Blue plan. Everyone will tell you to go for the blue plan. The Hans is ok, but if you’re eating >12 meals/week there you’re either spending your life there or… no, just don’t. It’s so far from the dorms even, it’s… xD such a bother to walk! I ate ~5 meals/week there at most and I tried my best to go there as much as I could. More dining dollars is better. During freshman year I had the blue plan, and apart from the rare occasion eating out in the city, I never spent any money on food beyond what dining dollars I was allotted each term. Just budget them, don’t eat at Currito’s every day. I was just fine, anyways.</p>
<p>Hey Ollie,</p>
<p>Quick question, do you know how to change the dining plan if you already completed your housing form?</p>
<p>I picked Gold before but now I’m feeling like Blue’s a better choice.</p>
<p>@neblix</p>
<p>Nope, I don’t have any idea. Maybe see if there’s any option to change it, or just call really? They might give you a hard time but c’mon it’s like April I don’t see why they have to be mean about it. =/ If anything, I do know you are able to change it before the start of each term. So if not for Fall, then for Winter.</p>
<p>All right, thanks!</p>
<p>I don’t think I’d mind waiting a term to change, if anything, I might find the Gold plan is decent enough for me.</p>
<p>@neblix
Yeah I am sure it is something that can be easily changed if you just call. I myself luckily chose blue the first time around :D</p>
<p>EDIT: Yet another quick question, how limited are the learning communities, does demand far outpace the LC housing available? The engineering one in particular~</p>
<p>@Zamiel</p>
<p>No idea, but I would imagine it is limited by how many rooms are in the dorm of course. If there’s a super high demand for the LCs I haven’t heard of it.</p>
<p>hey everyone! i’m planning on living in millennium(i’m in the honors program) but I feel really overwhelmed with this housing process. do I need to find a roommate before I can apply to a dorm? is housing in millennium guaranteed for honors students? drexelone is very confusing. thanks!</p>
<p>I have some doubts as well about how picking roommates works, because there is no place to save preference data like “doesn’t smoke” although you can search the whole student pool by those criteria. How the heck does Drexel make good random matches if it doesn’t even auto-match student by that data. :/</p>
<p>Should I just go down the criteria-matched list and send reqs to several dozen people hoping one of them replies? I like to think there is some sort of good system in place that will come later but it makes me a bit nervous that I am not told in advance how things will play out. :)</p>
<p>@sandsand</p>
<p>Your username is cute. =3</p>
<p>No you do not need to find a roommate since Drexel can just select one for you. If I remember correctly Millennium is guaranteed for Honors students as long as you apply within the deadline (or it was when I was there at least). DrexelOne is sort of confusing. But 90% of what you ever need is in the “Students” tab.</p>
<p>@Zamiel</p>
<p>Yeah I have no idea how Drexel does housing matches, I don’t even know anymore. Really as far as I remember I picked some things like “I like studying in the quiet!” and “I like staying up late!” and my randomly-picked roommate was just fine. Honestly, most roommates actually get along pretty well (some of them VERY well), but it’s the horror stories that are most often heard. If you really really have a problem you can change your roommate but that’s kind of like last resort sort of deals, mostly your RA will work their hardest to exhaust every possible choice before it gets to that point.</p>
<p>So I don’t know what this “request” part is, I never had that when I was there. I filled out some questions and got a name a few weeks later…</p>
<p>Most people at Drexel are really cool. So really. I know this is stressful, but… it’s be okay. xD I promise you, it will be ok. =P</p>
<p>Hey everybody. I just wanted to know that as a CS major or a Mechanical Engineer major which computer programming language will be the most useful to learn. I have 3 and a half months before uni opens and I just thought I might learn some computer programming. I already have a basic knowlede of Java which I did in 10 th grade but I have never worked with C++. So long story short, should I chose</p>
<p>C & C++</p>
<p>or</p>
<p>JAVA</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>
<p>@optimisticer</p>
<p>If you have basic Java knowledge, you should be fine. Seriously. You should be fine.</p>
<p>MechE majors, like all engineering majors take a freshman computer programming sequence in Maple and MatLab, which as far as I can tell are like, general scripting languages to teach you some programming (like using variables, loops, maybe some functions, idk). Basic Java knowledge should put you ahead of 80% of the people taking that class (which is like, hundreds of engineering freshman =P)</p>
<p>CS majors also take these engineering programming courses in addition to their Intro to CS courses which are taught with C++. So that of course goes deeper into computer science concepts, definitely goes into more object-oriented programming, pointers and idk… things. Basic Java knowledge should put you ahead of ~50% of other CS freshman taking this course.</p>
<p>Eventually you’ll learn that all programming languages are basically the same except not. It’s the concepts that are important from a student’s perspective, and most programming languages share these concepts, so it’s not completely important which ones you are fluent in. Anyway, decent depth into C++ will be helpful going into the Drexel CS program. It’s not entirely necessary that you have any decent programming skills to pass the engineering (MechE) freshman programming sequence.</p>
<p>=)</p>