I know I will be at a disadvantage but what should I do?

College Majors Engineering Majors
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<p>I will be attending the University of Illinois and I am looking forward to majoring in Computer Science. I will start off by telling you my background information and my goals. </p>

<p>Background Information: I was born and raised on the south-side of Chicago and at my high school the rigor compared to other more prestigous high schools was crap. My school only offered two AP courses. I was known as an amazing student, but I do recognize that I wasn't challenged. I don't use were I am born from as an excuse, but I do plan to defeat the odds placed against me. </p>

<p>With that being said I have a week until I take my placement exam. I wanted to know if I don't place into Calc 1, what are some steps that I should take? I have been studying every math subject on khanacademy.org as of right now. Any advice, or experiences would be a great deal of help.</p>

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<p>Hey. I know it sucks. I was kept out of school as a kid, and never really learned math in particular, but how to be a student in general. Couldn’t even really write with a pen or pencil. </p>

<p>I taught myself from subtraction to algebra, and ended up taking college algebra last summer as my first class since 1st grade. </p>

<p>It sucks, but I got as far as I could in the amount of time I had. You kind of just have to accept that you have a year of work to do before you are on par with a typical ENGR major, but it’s fun. I had a fun remedial year where I learned up through calculus, got my English classes out of the way, got some other stuff out of the way, took an intro ENGR class, my first science class/lab, fluffed up my GPA with a lot of easy A’s…and now I have momentum, confidence, study skills, and a little math foundation to work with as I start taking my tough courses. </p>

<p>If you don’t end up placing into calculus, you are relatively behind, but what does that really mean? Four months? You’ll be able to find classes to take so you aren’t wasting time, I wouldn’t kill myself over it.</p>

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<p>You have the desire to learn which is the first step. I don’t know how your school works, but the placement test at some schools has mostly questions from pre-calculus( algebra, trig ). If you review the material from precalculus and understand it well. You should be ok</p>

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<p>Placement test only recommends what to take. You can take Calculus 1 if you want.</p>

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<p>@XtremePower</p>

<p>That is not true most places I’ve seen.</p>

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<p>@Outsidelearning,</p>

<p>Read this thread as JscalesJr has a similar problem. If you take pre-calc, it will cause a delay in taking calc 2 (Math 231), which delays Physics 1 (Physics 211).</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1516024-precalculus-freshman-year.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/engineering-majors/1516024-precalculus-freshman-year.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>If you review the attached flow chart, you’ll see how delaying Calc 2, causes a delay in taking Phys 1.</p>

<p><a href=“https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/download/attachments/161021976/CS+requirements+flowchart+CSE+track+2013-03-22.pdf?version=2&modificationDate=1365611678000[/url]”>https://wiki.engr.illinois.edu/download/attachments/161021976/CS+requirements+flowchart+CSE+track+2013-03-22.pdf?version=2&modificationDate=1365611678000&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>You can work around this by talking with your advisor. You may want to take Calc 2 (Math 231) over next summer to catch up. Your advisor will help guide you through this…</p>

<p>Good luck!</p>

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<p>Thank you very much.</p>