Math level for engineering

If an engineering student failed math because of the poor study habits or parting too much that is one thing, but if student finds pre-calculus too difficult, I would reconsider major. As others pointed out it is highly unusual for engineering majors to start at preculculus level and will take a long time to graduate.

First things first: starting in precalculus is not necessarily a dealbreaker, but it almost certainly means that an engineering degree is no longer a 4-year endeavor. Having to retake precalculus means that is even more certain.

That said, failing precalculus in the first semester is not necessarily a dealbreaker in an academic sense. Students struggle early in a variety of classes, even “easy” and important ones, for a variety of reasons that may not necessarily say anything about that student’s viability as an engineer. Perhaps the stress of adjusting to living more independently hurt this student’s grades. Perhaps they were poorly prepared from high school either in terms of study habits or in terms of background knowledge and had a lot of catching up to do. Perhaps they really just couldn’t handle it. The point is that it’s hard to pinpoint a reason, and that reason is key to determining if engineering is a realistic career path. Failing it a second time would essentially be a dealbreaker in my opinion.

However, the issue is that precalculus is such a low level class that retaking it could set the student back an entire year, meaning that, realistically, completing an engineering degree is now all but guaranteed to take a minimum of 5 years. Is that a financially-viable plan for this student and their family? I can’t really answer that. It may be an option to save a little money and take precalculus at a community college and then go back to paying the full tuition at a 4-year university again once the student can hit the ground running rather than wasting a lot of time taking irrelevant courses due to the fact that the prerequisites for higher courses are not yet complete. This is particularly a problem when it comes to calculus, because, while professors are often willing to waive prerequisites in some cases (for example, if a student is just starting dynamics, I am willing to let them enroll in fluid mechanics anyway), they generally won’t waive that for calculus because a student would be utterly lost without it.

So really, this is an issue that the student must sort out with his or her family. Does the potential reward justify the risk and financial investment required to move forward from here.

When reading this I had to wonder if civil engineering is what this kid wants to do? My son just graduated in civil and while I have no basis to compare it to other types of engineering it is not any easy major, especially not for someone that math doesn’t come easily to. All engineering programs take a lot of dedication. I am mentioning this in case the expectation of it being an easy major was part of the reason for the choice. My son’s college required some students to start with precalc based on a proficiency test. It wasn’t necessarily unusual for some to start math at that level. An interesting thing that was said at orientation was that students tended to be as successful in the engineering program as they were in their first math class whether the first class was precalc or calc 2. That was based on their statistics so of course individual result may vary. As others have said it depends a lot on why this kid failed and also if this is a degree this kid really wants. It could be that even if you can tutor this kid to be successful with this class depending on how difficult it is to make this happen and his drive for success with this program you may not be doing him a favor. Of course if all he need is some help to get rolling then it might be all good. But as stated in the post above it is almost for sure that it will take at least 5 years to graduate.

@sattut: whoever told you civil engineering is “relatively easy” has no idea of the actual continuum of majors’ difficulty.
Could you steer the student toward taking classes that’d work for an information science/information technology degree, just in case? It still leads to a professional job but it has less math. What about accounting? Would the student be interested in that?It leads to a professional job, it’s rigorous but doesn’t involve too much math.
What did the student get good grades in during that semester?

Talked to the student and he took Calculus in high school. He was mostly taking humanities classes, which you can’t do for engineering, was not studying at all, and was getting poor grades in all subjects. He apparently had issues with maturity and relations with his parents. IMO, he probably could handle the Civil Engineering major if he studies and is motivated. I tried to help, but the problem wasn’t really with math or engineering.

You literally cannot graduate with a degree, even in engineering, without taking humanities courses.

RIght… but you can’t progress through engineering course sequences without taking mostly STEM classes.

It seems odd the student took Calc in high school, got placed in college pre-calc… and then failed it. But perhaps he just skipped class and homework assignment. That often happens when bright, immature students start college.

Sequencing of engineering classes is such that it would be highly unusual to take a majority of 1st semester classes as humanities and expect to graduate in 8 semesters. It’s possible he took this approach to ease into college and start out strong academically thinking it would be an easy load. Whether he could still graduate on time with a summer session thrown in depends on how often the sequenced classes are offered.

Next semester should show if this is purely a maturity issue or not…

Placement into a lower math course than taken in high school could be due to attending a lower quality high school.

Most likely is that, since he was placed into precalculus and has to retake it after failing it the first time, he cannot progress in the technical course requirements that depend on calculus. So he can only fill his schedule with humanities and social studies courses until he gets to the necessary math level. Obviously, this will delay graduation.

Wonder what his HS calculus grade was. Unless he did quite poorly at the high school level, I’d be letting the HS know their calc class didn’t prepare him for college level work. It’s not like he was retaking calculus (which is not a bad idea for many including my son), no he was taking the prep class for calculus in college! Something is off in this whole scenario…

Also, that their precalculus course did not cover the material sufficiently well for him to place into calculus.

If he took calculus in high school, earned a good grade, but failed the AP test (presumed, since he had to take a placement test and was placed into precalculus), that is another bad sign about the high school’s math courses.

That he failed precalculus the first time might even suggest that the lower level high school math courses (algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2) were of low quality. Perhaps he knew that material just well enough to pass those parts of the placement test, but not well enough to use it when applied to problems in higher level math courses.

What are the first semester grades for his other classes?

From what I recall from the civil curriculum a student could still take chemistry and intro to engineering classes without calc.

General chemistry does not need calculus but it does need a lot of algebra. If a student does not do well in precalculus then he/she will have a hard time with chemistry.

http://www.chem.tamu.edu/class/fyp/mathrev/mathrev.html

Some colleges require at least concurrent enrollment in calculus.

https://sebs.rutgers.edu/new/biology-and-chemistry.html