<p>I was recently registering for freshman orientation at UMCP and perusing classes when I noticed that over half of the 40 available spots for Calc II Honors had been taken. Given that only one or two of the six-ish orientations for incoming Honors students have passed, I feel that there won't be any available room for me when I get there to register.</p>
<p>My first option is to take the standard course, with its massive class size and lack of additional engaging material, my first semester.
My second is to wait until the second semester to take the honors version which, as a lifelong math nerd, I would <em>strongly</em> prefer.</p>
<p>I'm a bit conflicted since I want to take advantage of the supposed benefits of the Honors College and its small, exclusive classes, but I also might want to take advanced math or physics my second semester. I'm still a bit surprised that there are only two 20-person classes for among the many honors students, but I suppose they're not doing anything about it now... (</p>
<p>Is it only freshmen signing up for calculus? Typically, continuing students get first pick of classes, so the students enrolled probably aren’t all from the first couple orientations. It might not be filling as quickly as you think it is. Calc 2, if I had to guess, would be more sophomores than freshmen… and if that’s the case there’ll probably still be space.</p>
<p>What sorts of majors are you considering? If you think you want to do something STEM, you might want to do math sooner rather than later, since it’ll be required/helpful for a lot of your classes. If you’re leaning more towards humanities or something, it’s less important to do math early, so delaying would be fine.</p>
<p>I think you need to make a note of the majors you are considering in order to make this decision. If you are considering STEM, you should look at the pre-requisites of the introductory courses and check to see if delaying calc 2 will set you back on any of the degree plans. For example, if you are considering majoring in math, you would almost certainly want to go ahead and take calc 2 regardless. This decision also has a little to do with how good of a replacement class for calc 2 you can find.</p>
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<p>Honors calculus 2 in the fall would likely be all frosh with AP calculus credit. Sophomores taking calculus 2 in the fall would be one semester “late” and are probably not the best math students who would want to take the honors course.</p>
<p>However, most courses tend to have attrition in the first few days of class, so the OP may have some chance of getting in off the wait list if the course is full during pre-registration.</p>