High School question relating to majoring in Eng.

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I am a senior in high school and I am taking AP Calc BC and AP Physics C. I am not struggling by any means but I tend to make stupid mistakes on tests and thus I am not passing with "flying colors"(85 in Calc and 90 in Physics). I am not some whiny AP kid who cries about getting less than a 100 on a test but I am genuinely worried if I will be able to pursue an EE degree (and do well) in a top 50 school because I know that any engineering major requires great math and science skills. So should I take some summer courses to supplement my skills or should I go in cold? Any help will be appreciated :)</p>

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<p>Sorry up front for the long response.</p>

<p>To do well in these (and any) subjects you need to know the material “cold”. When working as a professional engineer, you also need to know the subject “cold”. {Yes, as a professional, you can always say (and you should) that you don’t know and will get back to them on that later when asked a question you can’t answer. However, do it too many times and your reputation will suffer. Of course, it suffers much more if you give a wrong answer. Obviously, the “get back to you on it” approach isn’t what you’re trying to accomplish on a test}</p>

<p>My advice:

  1. Read the material.
  2. If it makes sense to you, try the homework problems
  3. If you are struggling thru the problems, re-read the material, then attack the problems again
  4. After you finish the homework problems, re-read the material. This shouldn’t take as much time at this point as you should know it well by now. The reinforcing that this last read does should help you a lot.
  5. A quick read of what is to be lectured on the next day is invaluable to understanding the lecture. </p>

<p>At first, this will probably be a lot of work. However, if you know the previous material “cold” then you should pick up the new material quite quickly. If you do it this way, your savings will be in preparing for the next quiz or test. A quick review should be all that is necessary. Never try to learn it all at once, cramming for a test, it doesn’t work.</p>

<p>A math teaching consultant I met once set out the idea that the brain works on different intellectual levels. The lowest level was also associated with raw emotion. That is why, she claimed, that one knew what to do in a panic situation when driving, but you would not remember exactly what you did. Math is a higher level function and you needed to get away from that raw emotion to do it well, staying in the higher level thinking part of your brain. Don’t quite believe all she said, but most people I’ve met who fear math, don’t do well in it. Chicken and egg thing going on here, but . . </p>

<p>I do beleive that if you know the material, tests and quizes are then nothing to fear. Getting a good night’s sleep and being able to take a relaxed, focused approach to test taking goes a long way to improving your grades.</p>

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<p>I’m also interested in this question. I’m a junior with a similar problem of not performing exceptionally well in math/science courses (right now, I actually have quite good grades in calc AB and chem, but I will inevitably make ridiculous mistakes on some upcoming tests), but I still want to major in EE.</p>

<p>If I may, I’d like to tack on a question: will having little to no programming experience make an EE major impossibly difficult?</p>

<p>So…can only math and science geniuses do EE? :slight_smile: Thank you!</p>