I feel like I am not prepared for these courses. What should I review before taking these courses. What techniques of Integration should I know for DE? And are these courses tough?
If you’ve completed the pre-reqs, then you’ll be able to hold your own, I think (otherwise, the school wouldn’t let you continue on, no?).
I’m also taking these two classes this upcoming Fall, so I’ll be following this discussion.
For differential equations the most important thing to know coming in is how to differentiate and integrate with both single and multiple variables without even thinking. If you have that down than the rest of the course is merely learning the techniques used to find the function that satisfies the equation.
Most people don’t have trouble learning the algorithms to solving DE’s its the differentiation/integration/algebra/trig that they make the mistakes with.
For circuits there really isn’t anything you need to know in particular. Everything you need will be covered when circuits are introduced.
There really isn’t anything to review as Circuits will introduce the fundamental concepts that you will continue using throughout your education, if you are a EEE that is. My recommendation for the class is do the homework, there should be a lot. The more problems you do the easier it will get, as with anything.
With differential equations, as ImUrHuckleBerry stated, make sure your are fluent with the basic integration and all the differentiation techniques. Integration by parts and substitution are big ones, remembering euler’s identities will help as well. Can’t really think of anything else you should review, maybe synthetic division so you are able to find zeroes of a polynomial if you don’t have a calculator that can do it automatically.
I took diff eq as at a local college as a junior in high school and the main thing people struggled with was not actually being able to do the math but was more about recognizing what needed to be done to get the answers you needed. My class had two cumulative exams (midterm and final) and the general problem form was to give you a situation and information and then have you apply about 4 or 5 different techniques we learned to get the final answer(s) and people knew what to do at each step but it was what order the steps come in that was the struggle. I was taking the class with one of my friends who got a perfect on the calc BC exam his freshman year and we both ended up with 99s in the class and after the final exam our teacher told us that we were some of the best students she had ever had because we learned what we could do with the information gleaned from different techniques rather than just what information they give. To this point I would recommend that you spend your time not so much focusing on what integration techniques you might be forgetting (unless you just forgot most of it in which case you should try really heard to relearn it) and focus more on how each new technique you learn can be used along side other techniques to manipulate your answers to whatever you want them to be.
Have a solid foundation in the prerequisites. Otherwise, don’t trouble yourself too much - you can’t always be 100% ready for a difficult class because it will always throw curveballs at you, and it’s not worth the effort anyways. Just struggle through it and learn, as long as you are adequately prepared to do so.