<p>My DS is accepted in Engineering for Fall 2014. He is taking Honors Calc I at UT San Antonio this semester while in high school. Our question is whether it is better to take Honors Calc II which does NOT do MATLAB or regular Calc II which does do MATLAB in the Spring 2014 to get ready for when he is a Freshman at A&M Engineering.</p>
<p>How important is it to have MATLAB before MATH 251 (Calc III for Engineering)?</p>
<p>Thanks</p>
<p>Not important at all.</p>
<p>@izelkay, have you taken MATH 251? Did it use MATLAB?</p>
<p>I’m taking Math 251 this semester, and it doesn’t use MATLAB at all. If MATLAB is the only thing affecting your decision, I’d say to go ahead and take Honors Calc II.</p>
<p>@izelkay, Thank you.</p>
<p>I had heard from a Math major that MATLAB was a big deal at A&M. Glad to hear it is not, at least in engineering.</p>
<p>Well…MATLAB can become a big deal later on in upper-level courses, but your DS is better off learning it by himself rather than in MATH 151 & MATH 152. This is because they don’t really teach you how to use MATLAB in these courses. They give you a set of problems to do every week that aren’t correlated and don’t really pertain to anything. The TAs don’t really teach how to use it either, since they’re more concerned about the calculus we’re learning in class. </p>
<p>So you shouldn’t be concerned about MATH 151 & MATH 152 strictly for MATLAB; better to learn it on your own time, or take a course that strictly focuses on MATLAB.</p>