<p>I assume many of you have, but I'd like thoughts on it.</p>
<p>I mean, I guess if you're a prospective student or curious you might see it, but has anyone taken the time to really look at it? Frankly, I really don't know where to start except that it's somewhere among the undergrad courses. It's really cool. I think I might look at the mathematics and physics courses so I can get a better idea of it; even if I don't get accepted who says it's not a good thing to learn for yourself?</p>
<p>It seems reflective of the open, academic attitude of MIT, really.</p>
<p>I’m going to use it to teach myself both Microeconomics and Macroeconomics so I can take the AP tests in those subjects in May. My school doesn’t offer either of those classes and this seems like a great way to learn it. Plus I figure it can’t hurt since I’m applying to MIT. :)</p>
<p>None. MIT doesn’t split single-variable calc into two classes. The lowest-level math class, 18.01, is Calc AB + Calc BC, in a semester. If you’ve already taken Calc AB, and gotten a 4 or 5 on the test (or on the AB subset of the BC test), you can place into 18.01A/18.02A, in which you cover all of Calc BC in half a semester and then cover all of multi-variable calc in the second half of the semester + IAP. That was what I did.</p>
<p>for about half yes, but theres plenty of those “easy” questions where you must take derivatives to find pos,velo,acell</p>
<p>for the most part though you should be able to handle the “calculus” they use it doesnt go much farther than basic basic stuff</p>
<p>and the exams on the physics1 with walter lewin video are surprisingly easy</p>
<p>I used the video set for my physics class, before attending the course.</p>
<p>(but now thinking about it, without calculus it would be kind of not as useful…understanding certain things such as rates and the such are needed)</p>
<p>I’m thinking doing AP Physics because my school doesn’t even offer that. It seems like an amazing self-study tool, especially because a lot of the lecture notes are in PDF format and you can fill in the gaps yourself. Which is what I have always done- I doubt I’ve ever really learned anything tremendously useful directly from school.</p>
<p>My Physics teacher kept confusing my honors class because from the beginning of the year she started mentioning vectors when referring to velocity, forces, etc., because none of them had ever really learned a thing about vectors. They eventually picked it up but it wasn’t something that the New York State Regents Exams tested us on (they asked for the magnitude, usually) so it was not really a problem.</p>
<p>She delved into magnetic fields and so on, and everyone was absolutely lost when she started mentioning cross products. This is one of the advantages of actually reading for a change.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I assume that’s because they figure that MIT freshmen would have had taken calculus beforehand. My physics class usually touched calculus concepts but here students don’t take it until senior year. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I doubt looking at extra course material will give me a major edge (after all, I rarely apply outside knowledge to school subjects anyway) so when I do it, it will be mainly out of curiosity. Getting an edge should be secondary IMO because that defeats the purpose of education in the first place. But I always thought of learning as more than just doing the problem sets. I started my Calc AB/BC book earlier and the problem sets didn’t help me that much- it just proved to me that I understood it well enough to move on to the next topic, but so far I’ve just been covering mainly stuff I already knew.</p>
<p>Summer is great for studying though. I have all the time in the world and nobody to bother me, and I prefer it vastly over doing some job I don’t like or wasting my time playing video games.</p>
<p>Not necessarily - many, probably most, have, but 18.01 is still a fairly large class. However, the amount of calculus that you need in, say, an intro mechanics class (which is what 8.01 is), is small enough that you can learn it on the fly if you don’t know it. There is also the 8.01L option, which covers the same physics material as 8.01, but goes through both the fall term and IAP, rather than just the fall term, and is intended for people who have weak math backgrounds and/or have never seen physics before. It’s still calculus-based, but they have extra time so that they can catch people up on the necessary math and on basic physics concepts.</p>
<p>Well, I guess that’s true. Physics for me, at least, tended to just touch general calculus concepts like differentiation and integration, but we’d never really get into it. Although I figure that MIT doesn’t exclude people based upon what classes they’ve taken, but calculus seems like something most people cover at least by senior year in high school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I guess that freshman year at MIT focuses on bringing everyone there to about the same level.</p>
<p>I’m taking Bio and Chem @ OCW in MIT’s YouTube Channel. </p>
<p>PLEASE check it out. I am actually an incoming freshman to ANOTHER much, much less prestigious college (sophomore thanks to AP!) and I’m doing the classes for fun. Trust me, you learn A LOT. Professor Ceyer of Chem is specially gifted at teaching all these things that previously were just facts of memorization.</p>
<p>Most MIT people, probably. But certainly not all. There are vast numbers of high schools in the country that don’t offer calculus. And there are others where whatever calculus class they offer is pretty pathetic.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Well, it focuses on getting everyone to a minimum level. People who are ahead, are not prevented from going farther ahead. But the idea is that you don’t need to have previously had any calc, physics, chem, or bio, to major in any MIT program (though if you haven’t had any of those, you are not likely to get in - the point is that the majors teach you what you need to know and don’t assume background).</p>
<p>which course would be the high school equivalent (if there is one?) of chem or physics?
I’m trying to self study chem or physics for the sat II subject tests and am wondering which would be the best mit course to study. Thanks</p>
<p>In short, approaching something as ludicrous like a standardized test (after all, all of them are) with MIT course curricula is like attacking a field mouse with a nuclear bomb.</p>
<p>I’m sure they’d help but studying specifically for a standardized test is different from having, like, actual knowledge. First of all, MIT’s is a lot harder, of course, and it covers a lot more than what the SAT II may cover. Just buy a SAT II review book, or if you want to save even MORE time, just use a textbook you have on hand.</p>
<p>Also, I would say Physics is the easier of the two, namely because most of it is more common sense and less memorization- whatever math you may have to do is simpler and you can round all the constants to the nearest integer. The SAT II in Physics is aimed at a high school curriculum, honors level at the most. With Chemistry, you have to memorize a lot more, and again, it’s mainly aimed toward students taking high school level, not college level, courses.</p>
<p>I’d study the MIT courses because they’re interesting, not for the tests.</p>