<p>I'm going to be a senior in high school and all of the local colleges (UC berkeley, Contra Costa College, Berkeley City College) are not offering convenient times for me to attend their linear algebra classes (I would have to literally leave in the middle of the school day or I would barely make it to class on time, which is not good). Do you know of any good online courses in which I could actually get credit for the class? Also, is this extremely inferior to a real class with a professor? Give me your thoughts.</p>
<p>First, what is the purpose of taking the class before college?</p>
<p>Secondly, not all credits are transferable. For example, at CCNY engineering students take Vector Calculus + Linear Algebra in one course. We only offer linear algebra without vector calculus to other majors. So if you were to enter CCNY with the credits from an online course that only covers linear algebra you will have to retake the course because you are missing the vector calculus portion. I know it is quite rare to see linear algebra is taught along with vector calculus, but it isn’t rare that schools will reject external credits.</p>
<p>We can certainly suggest a few good online programs(it’s pretty easy to find because some are more well-known than the rest).</p>
<p>Piggybacking on what Jwxie said…</p>
<p>As far as transferring credits, Linear Algebra should be taken at a community college ONLY when you have a desired and SPECIFIC 4-year college in mind. That is because the Linear Algebra requirement varies so much among schools in the engineering, math and physics programs.</p>
<p>Some schools break down Linear Algebra in an “intro” class (taken as a sophomore) and another advanced course in junior/senior years. Some schools have separate more-theoretical L.A. course and a “L.A. for Engineers” course. Some schools even merge L.A. with Differential Equations in the first course.</p>
<p>L.A. is not as uniform across the board in its course versions as Calculus I, II and III in colleges.</p>
<p>As far as difficulty of material goes, it’s perfectly fine. Linear algebra is rather straightforward. I didn’t go to a single class and still made an A, I just did lots of practice problems and made sure I wasn’t making mistakes (which is really easy, lots of little computation).</p>
<p>Linear algebra is typically a sophomore level course, though it is often combined with other sophomore level math like differential equations (especially at semester system schools).</p>
<p>Math majors often take a more theoretical junior level linear algebra course for their major.</p>
<p>The other alternative math courses for students who have completed freshman calculus or AP Calculus BC include:</p>
<p>Multivariable calculus
Differential equations
Discrete math
Statistics (calculus-based)</p>
<p>You may want to see if any of them are available at convenient times. Also, there are several other community colleges in the area that you may want to check the course schedules at (e.g. Laney, Merritt, Alameda, Diablo Valley).</p>
<p>California community college to UC and CSU transfer articulation is given at <a href=“http://www.assist.org%5B/url%5D”>http://www.assist.org</a> . Linear algebra courses are generally fully transferable, but you have to watch out for situations where the transfer-to school has linear algebra and differential equations in one course, so you would have to take both to avoid to partially repeat the linear algebra part of the course.</p>
<p>I think that it’s a perfectly reasonable course to take online as a high school student. Whether you get credit depends on the school. </p>
<p>I’ve heard good things from BCEagle (another CC poster) about the online math courses at UIUC</p>
<p>[Course</a> List | NetMath at the University of Illinois](<a href=“http://netmath.uiuc.edu/courses#415]Course”>http://netmath.uiuc.edu/courses#415)</p>
<p>Epgy (stanford) and CTY (Johns Hopkins) also have linear algebra. I know that you can get a Stanford continuing education transcript for their course.
epgy.stanford.edu
cty.jhu.edu</p>