@Thelma2, I know a lot of students who fulfilled their English requirement at CC – often online. You might check that option so it doesn’t interfere with his internship. My son accepted AP credit for English, so I don’t have a feel for how easy/difficult it is at A&M. You might want to look at the Grade Distribution Reports for English 104 (simply type Grade Distribution Reports in the search field on the TAMU homepage and it will come up … you can search by term and class). Whether he takes it this summer or next, the only requirements to apply to your major are the two Engineering, two Math, and two Science courses. However, English 104 is a University requirement and may also be a prerequisite to a requirement sophomore year (my son’s sophomore curriculum includes a technical writing course spring semester that has English 104 as a prerequisite), so he will not want to delay it too long. My son took the standard Math 151, Phys 218 and Engr 111 first semester, plus two electives – ENDS 101 and THAR 281. Both electives fulfilled University Core Curriculum requirements and were easy As. ENDS 101 does take a fair amount of time, however. Talk with an advisor and just ensure he’s comfortable with the workload. Physics 218 is a difficult coure and Engineering 111 takes a great deal of time for a two-hour course. It’s the bootcamp for freshman engineers.
Our friend did take ENGL 104 (both of mine tested out with AP), he took it freshman year with ENG 111, he is NOT English “oriented” and found it very time consuming & rather tough since he hates English (constant papers). CC is the way to go, you are swamped with ‘busy work’ in that course. Most kids use AP credit to get out of ENGL 104.
From a student - get English out of the way if you can. The weedouts are going to keep you busy as it is, and ENGR 111 and 112 chew up a lot more time than the 2 credit listing would have you think. I was always glad that I didn’t have to write papers on top of all that. Any work you put in now to knock out English is probably going to pay back double during your first semester when you have extra time for Lego robots and physics homework.
It is unfortunate that he didn’t take AP english his senior year. He went IB his Junior year and had to take physics in summer school as a prereq coming into IB becuase his German, Band and something else left no room in his schedule. Then, before his senior year, he got the internship and because he has taken physics AB in summer school, he now needed to take BC without a good fundamentals in AB. So, besides the class, he does a lot of self teaching online and goes to a 4 hour study group on Thursdays.He is also in band (percussion) and does all of the all city, region and state competitions as well as the separate percussion concerts, practices, etc. Because of this, he elected not to do AP English and just did regulars.
I will check into it today and see if he can still register for summer school at our CC for English the first session and hope his new student conference doesn’t conflict!!!
Unfortunately, registration for CC closed yesterday and it will take time for SAT scores to arrive anyway, but, he has applied so when April rolls around next year, all will be set to sign up to take English and will knock both sections out of the way. Thanks all for the great advise.
@Thelma2, If classes are full, watch for your CC’s payment due date … openings are usually created by those who fail to pay. For example, our payments are due May 27. I know of a couple of students who last summer had no problem grabbing a course after the payment deadline passed. Also, many of the English courses can be taken online so it doesn’t interfere with his already busy schedule, so be sure to watch for those.