<p>I'm wondering if i should take it in my freshman or sophomore year? Is it a hard class?</p>
<p>This depends on your major. Some majors take 135, some take 151. If you plan on doing anything like engineering, math, sciences, etc, definitely take it freshman year. I am a math major, and I must say many of the professors are excellent, but there are a few rotten apples to avoid. If you’ve already had any calc in high school, calc. 1 shouldn’t be too hard for you. If not, then it will require more work. If you have any specific questions, or if you tell me your major and things like that, I can give you a little more advice.</p>
<p>How is Calc taught? In a big lecture hall? I plan to apply for the Business School after my soph. year. Are you in NB or Newark?</p>
<p>my suggestion would be to take it in the spring semester because the majority of those kids will be the kids not smart enough to place into calc, thus the people who placed into precalc, thus a better curve. you’ll be competing against smarter people fall semester and it will not be as good a cruve most likely</p>
<p>I am NB. Math 135 and Math 151 both have most of the sections with 2-80 minute lectures per week with around 80 students per lecture in a lecture hall with a professor. You then have 1 recitation per week, which is about 20-25 students (1/3 of your lecture class since it is split into 3).
In 151, recitations are taught by a TA and aided by a peer mentor, and are about 1/2 for going over homework and 1/2 for working on workshop problems in groups which you have to write up to hand in the next week. They helped my grade when I took it. Math 135 usually doesn’t use workshops, but they still have recitations for review.
There are also some sections of calc that are taught by just a TA for both the lectures and the workshops, and these classes usually have only 20-25 students. Some say TA taught sections are easier, but it depends on the TA just as it does on the professor.
I would definitely suggest getting out of the way freshman year.
I think the business school allows 135 (You should check this), but 151 is better if you might want to take further math courses since 151 is a much more thorough course than 135.</p>
<p>Is the Calc class at Rutgers the same as the one in high school? I’m guessing it’ll be more detailed though…</p>
<p>I really don’t see how Calculus would be any harder if it was taken at Rutgers or any other university/college. Calculus will always be the same everywhere, you can’t change the rules or laws of calculus. Sure maybe some professors may have thick accent, large classes, and TAs teaching most of the time, but most calculus text book explanation itself is sufficient for any student to grasp calculus on his or her own.</p>
<p>or am I giving everybody too much credit?</p>
<p>If you had a thorough AP Calc class, it should be almost equivalent to calc. My high school calc class was a joke, and so, it was a little bit hard. The biggest trouble is that many high school students are so used to getting tests where it just says “find the derivative of BLAH” or something, and while there is some of that in Rutgers/university level, there is more thinking required for many of the problems.</p>