<p>Great,Shrinkrap, Sounds like your son has a plan!</p>
<p>Sometimes colleges post “flowchart” of engineering courses to illustrate course flow/prereqs etc. This kind of thing can be helpful for playing “what if” on course selections. Here’s one example, but be aware that it will vary a lot by college and specialty.
<a href=“Home - Engineering, Design, & Society”>Home - Engineering, Design, & Society;
<p>Shrinkwrap - I’m encouraged by your son being on the upswing. Lots better than talented students (or atheletes) that peak early and then live in disappointment in college. It’s great that he is not scared off by engineering challenge. It sounds like you are doing a good job helping him sort through things. Good luck!</p>
<p>Wow! That chart is great!.. I think…</p>
<p>Wow - you can tell I have no STEM brain - I can’t even understand the chart - LOL!!!</p>
<p>Son is back at school, and says he needs notebooks and an agent…</p>
<p>Don’t judge! (smile) My bother picked him up from the airport. My brother says I’m raising him twice…sigh…</p>
<p>This seems to be the calculus book.
<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0538498676/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details#[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0538498676/ref=oh_o00_s00_i00_details#</a>
Single Variable Calculus: Early Transcendentals [Hardcover]
James Stewart (Author)</p>
<p>“Even if he gives physics a whirl until drop date it won’t hurt unless he gets behind in other subjects, and he would get a taste of what it’s all about.
And Shrink, if he plunges in, I’m available for help. I teach this stuff. PM, PM, PM.”</p>
<p>Empty your mailbox! (jk…?)</p>
<p>That’s one of the main calc texts being used now. They’ll use that for 2 semesters. Unbelievable the price they’re charging for the big textbooks these days.</p>
<p>Daughter’s using an earlier edition for Calc 2 this semester. Stewart has been around for a long time. At least she can use old textbook.</p>
<p>What would be interesting is if Universities started using Gilbert Strang’s free online calculus textbook.</p>
<p>Any word on a Physics text, Shrinkrap?</p>
<p>If you feel comfy responding, how did he do on the precalc test, and is he taking Physics this semester? Wishing him success!</p>
<p>Y’all are making me a little nervous. How hard is engineering freshmen year? I know that’s hard to quantify, I’m sure it depends on how smart you are to begin with. If you are relatively smart, took ap calcs, ap physics, ap chem in hs and did well what are the chances you’ll be okay? I looked at what ds will likely take next fall. His future college has 4 credit classes, so he’ll take 4 classes - a required freshman writing class, calculus (which one depends on his ap bc score), physics for engineers, and a basic engineering class - right now he wants to do a digital music class vs a survey of engineering or video game somethingerother. </p>
<p>If you could ballpark it - how much should he expect to have study per week or day?</p>
<p>The study time metric that I have seen is that 1 credit = 3 hours of work per week including class time and out of class study time. So a typical 15 credit course load would be 45 hours per week of work.</p>
<p>However, actual workload is probably less for most courses, with the exception being lab courses. Lab courses can be almost like two courses’ worth of work, because not only do you have to prepare for class (read the book(s)), go to class, and do assignments, you also have the prepare for lab (read the pre-lab materials), go to lab, and do a lab write-up (though the lab does not add extra tests or final exams). Courses with computer programming, big term projects (this can include humanities and social studies courses), or huge amounts of reading (some humanities and social studies courses) can also take a up a lot of time.</p>
<p>That’s a reasonable load, eyemamom. How much time he has to spend really depends on how quickly he picks up the ideas presented and can work through the problems. High end estimate is probably about 50 hours including time in lectures and labs. Important thing is to realize that he will probably be spending more time cracking the books than some of his non-engineering/science major friends.</p>
<p>Wow, cross-posted with ucb and gave a similar response. :)</p>
<p>
I can only speak for EE. Lab courses can take a lot of time, but a lot of it depends on how good you are in design, and whether you can get the labs to work. Some labs will be done in teams so it might matter how much help your partners are. I was horrible at transistor amplifier design, I could never meet the specs, so that took me some time.</p>
<p>Although we didn’t do the real elegant programming like computer scientists, EE programming can take some time. I spent forever trying to program a Taylor Series expansion approximation of sine in 8086 assembly instruction set. I kept getting divide by zero and overflow errors IIRC. I can’t remeber if it ever worked - it’s one of those bad memories I’ve blocked out. :)</p>
<p>But that course load sounds fine.</p>
<p>Chiming in again with information I have pulled out of my sophomore engineering son - he says he probably puts in about 25 hours a week of study time outside of class. He said second semester of freshman year was the biggest workload so far (not the hardest, just the most work), with two science with lab classes, two math classes and an engineering/programming class where he learned C and Matlab. This past semester he said there was more studying and less homework. Last year he lived on a floor of all engineering students and this year all of his apartment-mates are engineering students so he has never spent much time with other major kids, so never compared workloads (probably a good thing). He and his buddies definitely get their party on on Friday and Saturday nights but never during the week. Saturdays are reserved for football and relaxing and Sundays, he studies pretty hard but keeps an eye on football and his fantasy team. Sunday nights are for going to tutoring and help sessions. He took two reading-intensive gen eds this summer at our local community college, which I’m glad he did, because it would have been hard to get all that reading in for classes that aren’t your top priority.</p>
<p>eyemamom - The answer depends upon the student (aptitude and organization), the college/program, and the intensity of labs. Just count on most time be classes or studying. Luckily all the engineers will be in the same boat - that’s why an engineering dorm can be a good thing. They will work hard. And they ofent play hard together as time permits.</p>
<p>Next book purchased
[Amazon.com:</a> Matlab: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving: A Practical Introduction to Programming and Problem Solving eBook: Stormy Attaway: Kindle Store](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/Matlab-Practical-Introduction-Programming-ebook/dp/B005DI9M44/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1326348192&sr=1-2]Amazon.com:”>http://www.amazon.com/Matlab-Practical-Introduction-Programming-ebook/dp/B005DI9M44/ref=sr_1_2?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1326348192&sr=1-2)</p>
<p>He has not dropped physics but said he would talk to his advisor about my concerns THIS WEEK. My email draft is at the ready. I think I can at least ask what a 4.5 or 5 year plan would look like, and what the 4,5, and 6 year grad rates in engineering are.</p>
<p>My EE S lived with an English major 1st year. S didn’t complain of his workload & did repeat a lot of the coursework he had in HS, even tho he had gotten 5s on nearly all his APs–calculus ab, physics b, physics c, several CS courses, etc. He said the English major seemed to work hard too–TON of reading & writing. His sophomore year, I have no idea what the 3 people he lived in majored in. His JR & SR year, he shared an apartment with a video game engineer major who was VERY mellow (not sure if & when he graduated). S also worked p/t in the engineering lab during the year, doing some research (which is/will be published) & had study groups in his apartment (got lots of chairs in Craigslist so they would have the groups in HIS place instead of him having to go elsewhere). Most times we spoke with or met with him, he seemed pretty calm and relaxed, so not sure how tough the workload got for him. The last term & year, he was able to take some fun courses–sailing and building a stereo receiver.</p>
<p>I think S liked living with non-engineering kids the 1st 2 years–helped him get away from being ONLY around engineers (his room mate JR & SR year was so mellow, not sure he should even be counted as an engineer); S’s best friend was in another major–business & ROTC officer, I think. </p>
<p>Similarly, D is living with folks who aren’t majoring in her field of cinema. When I was a student ages ago, never lived with others in my field either–for undergrad or grad school. It kept life more interesting and less intense.</p>
<p>The school where ds is going doesn’t have a special engineering dorm. He didn’t want that either. His friends now are an eclectic mix. </p>
<p>I saw up thread about mat lab. DS starts that next week for a 1/2 year elective. Two different engineers from our local naval airbase teach the course to him and the two other kids who are in ap calc bc. I don’t really know what it is, but he’s excited for this class.</p>
<p>MATLAB is a tool used in engineering.</p>
<p>[Free</a> Online Course Materials | Resource Home | MIT OpenCourseWare](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-002-introduction-to-matlab-spring-2008/]Free”>Introduction to MATLAB | Supplemental Resources | MIT OpenCourseWare)
[Free</a> Online Course Materials | Other MATLAB® Resources at MIT | MIT OpenCourseWare](<a href=“http://ocw.mit.edu/resources/res-18-002-introduction-to-matlab-spring-2008/other-matlab-resources-at-mit/]Free”>Other MATLAB® Resources at MIT | Introduction to MATLAB | Supplemental Resources | MIT OpenCourseWare)</p>