<p>Well, in my friends’ state schools freshman classes are around 150 for majors like EE. By senior year it’s cut down to 20-30. I wasn’t surprised.</p>
<p>After going to orientation, I know some engineering majors who have to take pre-calculus because they bombed the math placement test, a lot of public schools accept everyone and then weed them out</p>
<p>I’m just surprised all these math-less people even applied to engineering. Probably figured that since they enjoy tinkering around with tools, they’d enjoy engineering… poor fools. </p>
<p>And the number of people doing CS just because they like video games astounds me.</p>
<p>“So I have to ask, then: how do most people survive engineering programs?”</p>
<p>They don’t.</p>
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<p>I think it is more important to have a love for tinkering than mathematics if you want to do engineering. After all, that’s what it is all about, right?</p>
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<p>Maybe they weren’t as lucky as you and went to a rural high school where they didn’t have a strong math/science program? In any case, there’s nothing wrong with remedial classes.</p>
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<p>By tinkering, I mean fixing motorcycles and building things. No matter how good you are at that, if you can’t handle theory/design engineering isn’t for you.</p>
<p>I know a brilliant engineer with a Phd in english. He’s done all sorts of low-level and very difficult design and implementation and is doing theoretical work right now. I know another guy that retired in his early 50s that got terrible grades in undergrad as a Forestry major that turned out to be a great software engineer. These people are fairly rare - I know far more engineers that went the traditional route.</p>
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Ding ding!</p>
<p>Not every high school student goes through calculus or even has the option to. Just because someone places into pre-calc doesn’t mean they don’t have mathematical abilities. It may just mean that algebra was all their high school offered, so pre-calc is where they belong.</p>
<p>As I said before, placement test determines where you start, not where you finish.</p>
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<p>I thought the test was insultingly easy compared to the SAT Math, if that’s any indicator.</p>
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<p>Heh, I agree. My dad’s an EE Ph.D, so I’ve had a chance to read through some of his old textbooks. This stuff can get quite mathematically and analytically difficult.</p>
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<p>Video games can be interesting to write (I have written a few), but people grossly underestimate the mathematical, algorithmic, and software engineering detail that goes into writing 2D or 3D code along with things like collision detection, efficient scene management, a flexible camera, etc. But, then again, most CS majors I’ve known who went into the field “because games were cool”, dropped out almost immediately when they couldn’t handle it.</p>
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<p>You need both of course. You need the mathematical skills to do the work, and the love for “tinkering” to keep you motivated.</p>