<p>I am in a very big dilemma. Right now I am a sophomore in college, in Texas and next spring I'll officially be complete with all my core subjects. I have a 4.0 GPA and I plan on transferring to an Engineering school. The only problem is that next semester I would start Pre-Cal and most schools require Calculus to be admitted into their engineering program. This makes me not eligible for next Fall. In Fall 2014 I will be finished with Calculus but by then I would have to wait until Fall 2015 to start Engineering school (specifically UT Austin and A&M) because no University accepts students for Spring or Summer. I don't want to take this route because it will take forever but I don't see any other path I can take. I don't want to CLEP out of any math course because I haven't taken these courses before and I need to learn all that I can.</p>
<p>Breakdown:
Spring 2013 - Finish all my core (After I complete my core I will only be taking one math per semester because that's all I have left to finish. I don't want to wait a complete year until I can finally transfer.)
Fall 2014 - Have Calculus I
Fall 2015 - Start Engineering School</p>
<p>Can someone please help me out, I am really stressed out right now and have no idea what to do.</p>
<p>Can you take Calc in next summer before matriculating? Call UT-A and TAMU and ask if it’s possible to get an acceptance that is provisional on successfully completing summer coursework.</p>
<p>It might be possible to get accepted to the university that you want to go to, without being officially accepted into the engineering program. Then you could take calculus your first semester there, and start in the engineering school the next semester.</p>
<p>As entomom mentioned, it may also be possible to take calculus over the summer too.</p>
<p>There’s always the option of self studying the pre-calc topics and testing out of it though. It’s a lot to take in, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to self teach the majority of the material over winter break, then test out of it right before spring semester starts up. That would allow you to start calculus in the spring.</p>
<p>Of all the math courses to know like the back of your hand for engineering, precalc ranks #1 (tied with algebra II really). Just take that into account if you plan to self study.</p>
<p>That’s very true. If you did test out of it, you would probably still have to review some topics and pick up some new concepts while you’re going through calculus. </p>
<p>Self studying is certainly a viable option, if it’s something that you could truly apply yourself to, but it’s also very important to appreciate just how much algebra is involved in calculus. Finding derivatives and such is basically a bunch of algebraic manipulation that incorporates the rules of differentiation. Some of the basic algebraic properties involved in differentiation can give people a hard time at first.</p>