Just finished my Sophomore year--willing to answe questions!

Colleges and Universities A-Z Georgia Institute of Technology
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<p>It's been a long time since I last came to CC, so I thought I'd drop by and see what's up. I just finished my sophomore year here at GaTech as a Mechanical Engineering undergraduate student and figured I'd be willing to answer questions to all GaTech hopefuls or what have you.</p>

<p>It's been a tough 2 years, taking all these math/physics courses and ME courses. They don't lie when they say this school is hard, but if you work at it and use your resources properly than you can get good grades.</p>

<p>For the record, I can't really answer much in regards to on-campus housing since I live off-campus.</p>

<p>With that said, ask me anything and I'll try my best to answer. I'm sure there are other experienced people here but it's always good to have another resource!</p>

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<p>i’m a jr in high school and really aspiring to go to tech, and i want to major in biochemistry</p>

<p>in regards to computer science and intro physics I and II, would you say that these are manageable to take with a hard science like inorganic or gen chem? who were your professors, and how would you rank them? what was the work like in those classes, and did the work overload you ever? </p>

<p>how is the overall atmosphere of gatech and atl?</p>

<p>i think what you are doing now is awesome and uber-helpful.</p>

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<p>My general rule is to take no more than 3 difficult classes per semester in your first two years. So CS I + Calc I/II +Chem I combined with English I/II + Psych1000 / Health is a good combination in the first semester. Calc II/III + Inorganic + Physics I combined with English II/Government/International Affairs is a good second semester.</p>

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<p>I will be a transfer student to tech and ive taken all of my core classes at my local college so the only class il be needing to take as far as math goes is Calc 3 for computer science. Physics, chem, english,calc1,2,linear alg will all be finished. I am a computer science major but im confused as to which classes are tougher than others. I want to start off with 12-14 credits my first semester, which classes would you recommend to a transfer student for first semester? According to the catalog these are the classes they suggest freshmens taking </p>

<p>CS 1301 INTRODUCTION TO COMPUTING * 3
CS 1100 FRESHMAN LEAP SEMINAR 1
WELLNESS 2</p>

<p>And for second semester</p>

<p>CS 1050 UNDERSTANDING & CONSTRUCTING PROOFS * 3
CS 1331 INTRODUCTION TO OBJECT ORIENTED PROGRAMMING * 3</p>

<p>Second year 1st sem
CS 1332 DATA STRUCTURES AND ALGORITHMS FOR APPLICATIONS* 3
MATH 2605 CALCULUS III FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE</p>

<p>Im trying to figure out which classes to sign up for my very first semester. Ive taken all social sciences and composition classes required to graduate. How can i figure out which classes are difficult and which are less difficult so i can take 2 of each?</p>

<p>I know that 1301 is a pre requisite to 1331 which is a pre requisite for 1332. So i have to take em 1 by 1 each semester…any suggestions?</p>

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<p>CS is a mess now that they have the different “treads”. You’ll want to talk to a CS major to get an idea how that works.</p>

<p>Engineering is much more straight forward.</p>

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<p>Akbar - I’m a CS major… I think I’ve talked to you before akbar but please PM me with your questions and your specific situation. I am a student and have run info sessions for the college of computing before, so I will probably know the answers to a lot of your questions. In your PM please include what credits you will come in with and I can help you make a schedule for you first semester :)</p>

<p>By the way, BanjoHitter, threads don’t affect your first few semesters’ classes at all. They come into play in terms of your upper division classes.</p>

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<p>So Feez, tell me how the typical first semester will be. How many study hours did you have to put in per week? Were you able to get in a study group or was that even necessary? How hard will Cal I and Chem be?</p>

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<p>Yeah I have a question about Health/Wellness, I see that it’s required (at least for my major, I’d assume every major). Is that class basically like a HS health class/easy A? </p>

<p>One more question: What does Computing for Engineers include? (Basically: what is it? What do you do in it?)
Thanks!</p>

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<p>It is an easy A if you pay attention in lecture and keep up with the readings. Many students do quite poorly in the class because they put almost no effort in it.</p>

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<p>It’s not like a public high school class, but it’s easy based on Tech standards. Meaning spending 30 minutes to and hour per day studying for ishould get you an A or B.</p>

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<p>^Lol dude. You are the most negative Tech student I have ever read. Did a Tech professor kill both your parents and your dog, too?</p>

<p>Thanks for the answer fabrizio.</p>

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<p>I basically regurgitated what fabrizio said. If you go in expecting it to be the same as high school health, you’re going to get a C. That’s what you asked. Any more questions?</p>

<p>And before you marginalize me you may want to take a look at this site, among others (remove the parentheses)-
<a href=“http://www.(s)tudentsreview.com/GA/Georgia_Institute_of_Technology.html[/url]”>http://www.(s)tudentsreview.com/GA/Georgia_Institute_of_Technology.html</a></p>

<p>"A pretty good description of what life will be like if you go to Tech:</p>

<p>You’ll be given loads of work, lots of it pointless, and the resources you need to do it will sometimes not even be available. Your friends at other colleges will talk about how many cool people there are in college. You’ll tell them that at Tech everyone is either a complete nerd, and antisocial, or an annoying frat guy. Your friends will describe the great parties they go to every few nights, and you’ll describe how binge drinking by yourself almost kills you once a month. Your friends will worry about getting a B in their two hard classes, and you’ll worry about passing your 4 hard classes.</p>

<p>Tech is everything bad about high school, without the good things, only you live in it. And you see very few attractive girls around campus.</p>

<p>One of my professors, who also went to Tech, said, “Tech doesn’t teach you to be the best engineer. Techies aren’t as good at engineering as graduates of places like MIT, Caltech, or Stanford. What Tech does is teach you to be blindly obedient, to make you willing to do any sort of masochistic act if it will further your career.”</p>

<p>If you are 100 percent sure you want to be an engineer, and already have friends at Georgia Tech, and can’t get into MIT or anywhere better, then coming to Tech is a decent option.</p>

<p>But if you aren’t completely sure yet about what you want to do in life, and you hope to make new friends in college and get a girlfriend, don’t come here.</p>

<p>I came here after getting rejected from MIT. I have a 34 ACT and 2240 SAT (1493 on the old scale), I’m a national merit finalist, I had a 4.5 GPA, and 15 hours of credit from AP exams; I never even studied in high school, because everything was easy for me, and I never studied for the ACT or SAT. People call me a genius (as if that term has any inherent meaning). I thought I wanted to do engineering as my career, even though my passion is music. Tech made me hate engineering, and I’m going to transfer out to major in music, even if it means it’ll be harder to get a decent job and I won’t make as much money."</p>

<p>Apparently I’m not the only one with a bad experience.</p>

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<p>Feez,</p>

<p>What classes did you take the first two years? One thing I’m worried about are the physics/chem labs. How difficult will they be if I hadn’t been prepared too much in that area?</p>

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<p>Before I posted, I looked at a couple of the threads, and they do appear to vary in 1000 level courses: Media doesn’t require CS1301, Theory requires CS1171 instead of CS1050, etc. That looks to me like first semester differences, I so that’s why I suggested he contact a CS major.</p>

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<p>I understand that you somewhat reiterated what he said, and I’m going to work my ass off like I do in HS (I go to an actual HS, unlike your kindergarten “high school” apparently). But your studying estimates are way off! It doesn’t take 30 minutes to an hour per day. That’s not what he said. He said keep up with reading and go to lectures. I’m sure you can do the reading in an hour, so it sounds like a couple hours of reading and studying a week should make it an easy A, not an hour each day to get a B.</p>

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<p>Tech used to have an HPS1041 where you could fulfill the Health requirement by running, swimming, or a combination of the two for 3 hours/week. That was a great class.</p>

<p>With HPS1040, if you attend every lecture, pay attention, read the class material, and study 1-2 hours for every exam, it’s a pretty straight forward A if you’re at least somewhat capable. That when you add the time to read the material to the study time for exams, that’s maybe 3-5 hours per week of outside class work.</p>

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<p>As far as I know, all combinations of CS threads end up requiring both intro CS and CS1050 (since you have to take 2 threads, these courses end up popping up). Also CS 1171 can be taken at any time; many people actually take it later in their college career. Many people don’t pick their threads until second year, and change them at least once. This is why they make it very easy to move among threads in terms of your lower division classes; for example if you took CS1315 as your intro CS class, then you change out of the media thread, they will count CS1315 as your CS1301 credit, so you don’t have to retake an intro class or anything.</p>

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<p>Didn’t expect so many replies so soon, but I’ll try to get to all the unanswered questions!</p>

<p>@majord14:
-Yes, it certainly is possible to take CS and/or Physics along with a tough science subject. It is very typical to see someone taking the intro CS, Phys, and Chem classes all in one semester. You’re going to have to get used to having more than just one “hard” class while at Tech. For CS 1371 I had Smith; for Physics 2211 I had Jarrio, and I opted out of Gen. Chemistry with my AP Test scores so I didn’t have to live through that. I did take Biology though, which was a difficult class as well. In general, you should check out the GPA distributions by class and professor at Course Critique to get a general idea of which professors are “harder” than others:
[SGA</a> Course Critique - Search Critique](<a href=“http://143.215.198.35/critique/Search.php]SGA”>http://143.215.198.35/critique/Search.php)</p>

<p>@Inezz:
-The typical first semester depends by student but I’m guessing a common load could include Calc 1, English 1101, Gen. Chem, GT 1000, and Wellness. Like I said, I didn’t take Chem at Tech so I don’t know how hard it is but I remember my peers talking about how it’s a pain in the ass and the lab portion is relatively difficult as well, so be warned that it most likely isn’t as easy as high school chemistry or even AP Chemistry.</p>

<p>On Calc 1, here’s something I’ve noticed about the 4 main math courses at Tech (Calc 1,2,3, diff eq). There are lots of varying stories about which math courses are harder than others; you’ll hear different things from different people who’ve had different experiences. Math courses seem pretty professor-oriented. Some professors make things annoyingly difficult while others are a lot more lax. For instance, I know a ton of people who think Calc 2 was their hardest math course, but for me it was a pretty easy A. I found differential equations to be the hardest math course I took but my professor was a really hard graduate student (it was also the only math course I took here where there was little to no curve). And to make things even harder, when you’re signing up for classes, they usually don’t tell you which math professors are teaching in what time slots, so you just sign up for whatever fits in your schedule builder. During phase 2 registration they release the professor names, and then you have people trying to switch to the easier professors. Oh, and math courses fill up ridiculously quick at Tech. Just something to look out for in general about math.</p>

<p>@SLightManifesto:
-Here’s a list of topics covered in CS 1371, using MATLAB as the programming language. I’d say CS is the first real hard class for most people, especially if you don’t have any previous programming experience. You’ll need to form study and homework groups to get things done because the homework in this class takes a long time, and you get weekly homework. </p>

<pre><code>* data types

  • the use of variables for storing data
  • basic mathematical and logical expressions
  • arrays
  • operations on arrays
  • strings and character arrays
  • structures
  • file input and output
  • conditional statements
  • selection
  • repetition
  • functions and procedures
  • variable scope
  • plotting 2-D and 3-D data
  • recursion
  • manipulating sound
  • manipulating images
  • queues and stacks
    </code></pre>

<p>Here’s the textbook used for the course in case you want to get a head start:
[Pearson</a> - Engineering Computation with MATLAB, 2/E - David M Smith](<a href=“Page Not Found |”>Search)</p>

<p>@ChemE14:
-Unfortunately I can’t comment on Chem labs, but the Physics labs are a relative joke. They’re extremely easy. Don’t fret too much on them.</p>

<p>Here are the courses I took:</p>

<p>Fall 2008
MATH 1501 CALCULUS I
ENGL 1101 ENGLISH COMPOSITION I
BIOL 1510 BIOLOGICAL PRINCIPLES
WELLNESS</p>

<p>Spring 2009
MATH 1502 CALCULUS II
ENGL 1102 ENGLISH COMPOSITION II
PHYS 2211 INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS I
CS 1371 COMPUTING FOR ENGINEERS</p>

<p>Fall 2009
ME / CEE 1770 ENGINEERING GRAPHICS & VISUALIZATION
MATH 2401 CALCULUS III
PHYS 2212 INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS II
MSE 2001 PRINCIPLES & APPLICATIONS OF ENGINEERING MATERIALS
COE 2001 STATICS </p>

<p>Spring 2010
MATH 2403 DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
ME 2016 COMPUTING TECHNIQUES
ECE 3710 CIRCUITS & ELECTRONICS
COE 3001 MECHANICS OF DEFORMABLE BODIES
ARBC 1001 ELEMENTARY ARABIC I</p>

<p>About Tech’s difficulty, to be honest I think it’s a little blown out of proportion. Sure, this school is hard as hell and requires you to work, but it’s not impossible and there are tons of people who succeed. If you want to chill around all day and only occasionally study, Tech is not the school for you. Also, there are tons of resources on campus; from tutoring to review sessions to help you with subject material–the resources are all there, it’s just that a lot of people don’t go out of their way to use them. They just blame their professors and/or TAs for not teaching them well. Tech is a top school, it’s co-op program is excellent, and lots of companies come here for hiring since this is the major engineering school in the South. I’m going to be doing a summer internship with the Boeing Co. this summer, for instance. Great opportunities exist here as long as you don’t let them fly by, and I’m sure the same could be said for several other universities out there.</p>

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<p>I’m taking three courses over the Summer and Wondering if you could give some advice/comments on the course (difficulty wise). </p>

<p>1) MATH 1502 CALCULUS II (specifically relative to MATH 1501)</p>

<p>2) PHYS 2212 INTRODUCTORY PHYSICS II (specifically relative to PHYS 2211)</p>

<p>3) MSE 2001 PRINCIPLES & APPLICATIONS OF ENGINEERING MATERIALS</p>

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<p>As I mentioned, the difficulty of math classes depends a lot on your professor. But in general I felt the beginning portions of Calc 2 were the hardest parts, since you’re still doing actual Calculus in that time (series, sequences, and other junk). After that, the rest of the 2/3 of the course is linear algebra, so how you find the difficulty of basic linear algebra material will probably affect what you think of the course. </p>

<p>Physics 2 is structured nearly identical to Physics 1, it’s just different material. I found Physics 2 to be much harder than Physics 1. And just for the record, I took classical Phys 1/2, not modern.</p>

<p>I found MSE2001 to be pretty difficult, but I believe my professor was one of the harder ones (his avg GPA was much lower than the other professors who teach the course). The material itself isn’t too bad, and overall it felt like a chemistry course. </p>

<p>I’d say it’s going to be a busy summer for you. Good luck.</p>