Parents of engineering freshman....

Parents Forum
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<p>Another reason for taking 5 years to do an engineering degree is if you are in a co-op program. My S is at University of Cincinnati where co-op is mandatory. He starts his 1st co-op job winter quarter and I think it will be great for him. He is a wonderful student but real life is different from the classroom.</p>

<p>LOL my father said “If he’s so smart why is he going to take 5 years to finish?” I patiently explained EVERYONE does co-op and it’s a very good thing. </p>

<p>You can also take a class or two during co-op (evening classes) and that would be useful if you only managed 15 credit hours during a regular quarter.</p>

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<p>I ditto ucb’s comments-

Frankly, I don’t know what the point was of even posting the original statement. Rigor is in the eye of the beholder anyway. </p>

<p>There are many people who believe there is Caltech, MIT, and then everything else a step below. My father, with a Caltech grad degree, always said the best engineers who worked for him in aerospace came from Cal State Long Beach. So you can certainly be a fine engineer and get a job graduating from LMU.</p>

<p>If the point was to say, “Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be that hard”, I am certain that isn’t true.</p>

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You need to take these courses and they require the same sorts of skills as engineering. But technically how critical each of them are depends on which field of engineering you choose. Calculus is used in all areas of engineering, but maybe some slightly more than others. But you can’t really get away with not knowing your math. Chemistry - I took a lot of it because my first degree was biophysics. But I’d be hard pressed to remember using it much in EE. Maybe a tiny bit here or there. Ditto all the classical mechanics I learned in physics. Maybe used it a bit for something or other, but not a core portion of the EE curriculum. at least as far as I recall. </p>

<p>I’m not a computer engineer, but I suspect they don’t use either the chemistry or the physics all that much. I know they use math, at least math of some type. I know some of computer engineering overlaps EE. But like I said, I’m not an official computer engineer and wouldn’t claim to know what they need in their program.</p>

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<p>Calculus is a given in most cases (no problem passing the courses); the first two calculus physics courses are, in general, more indicative of further engineering study than chemistry. That is to say, if you have a hard time to pass the courses, probably you should consider majoring in industrial engineering, computer engineering (depends on schools) etc and not in EE, ME, ChE etc.</p>

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<p>A few…</p>

<p>First, pure Comp Sci (or Software Engineering) is mostly software classes without getting much into the hardware aspects of computer science. I.e. no engineering classes whatsoever dealing with things like Digital Design, Embedded Programming, and the like. Or much in the way of lab experience using toys like scopes, analyzers, and the like. It is often offered out of the College of Sciences or similar, and will likely involve a bit less Calcul-y math and more Liberal Arts/Minor type coursework.</p>

<p>Computer Engineering is usually offered alongside an EE degree and focuses more on the hardware aspect of it, including more courses in Digital Design, basic Engineering courses, labs, and the like. Throw in the obligatory engineering math, physics, and the like and you take out electives, maybe a few less high end comp sci courses, and add more EE courses as electives, and so on.</p>

<p>The career paths are a bit disjoint in theory; Comp Sci is more software development the way we think of it, i.e. the Googles, Microsofts, and the likes. Anything that runs on a PC, Windows, Linux, and the like. The Computer Engineering types are more likely to end up in hardware-centric companies.</p>

<p>Of course there are exceptions. I’m a Comp Sci type who knows next to nothing about hardware (ok, not this bad, but I could not hook up a scope for a trace to save my life). Yet I write code for mobile communication and entertainment devices alongside mostly EE’s or CSE’s. This is possible because even within a product like this, there are ‘layers’ of software, and the high level layers are pretty much straight code, while the lower layers are more hardware-specific and require intimate knowledge of schematics and the like.</p>

<p>CSE’s also act as ‘Systems Engineers’, responsible for integration of software and hardware, test and validation, and the like. </p>

<p>Overall, CS tends to be ‘easier’ math wise in terms of Calculus and the like, tho they have more stuff on Discrete Math that is quite entertaining in its own way.</p>

<p>Ultimately, it all depends if the CS degree is offered out of the School of Engineering, or the CS dept has an affinity for math regardless. At Purdue, this was the case, while at Cajun State we were mostly out of the College of Sciences, with a bit less math. Finally, some schools may have ‘concentrations’ or ‘tracks’ which end up focusing the student more into this area or that, with significantly different curricula; at Cajun State we had a ‘scientific’ option in Comp Sci which had nearly as much math as math majors (Mrs. Turbo double majored with little effort in comp sci and statistics). So, it’s very school dependent but generally follows the Sciences vs Engineering difference in paths.</p>

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Perhaps that depends on the community college. I completed the first 2 years of an engineering degree at a cc and was quite well prepared for the jr/sr years at the state flagship, finishing summa cum laude.</p>

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I have the Serway/Jewett text they appear from the syllabus to have used last spring. There is some calculus starting in chapter 2, and chapter 3 is vectors. It’s possible that since Calc I is a *co-*requisite, that the physics is taught with that in mind. The problem is not just the assumption by the text that the student knows basic calculus already, but the pace of the physics, which amounts to a chapter a week.</p>

<p>Shrinkrap, did S have a physics course in HS?</p>

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<p>Computer Science is math. Computer Science programs add a lot of software courses that are useful in industry. In many places, though, you can go the theoretical computer science route.</p>

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<p>It seems that high-schools want to push their AP statistics as a means of selling their high-schools to parents and students and they may advertise the numbers of students taking APs without providing the quality in the earlier grades to support success in AP courses. My son, the tutor, states that most of the problems that calculus 1 students come in for are really algebra or trig problems where they have a weak foundation.</p>

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<p>It may also provide a look into what college math, science and computing look like
for a bored high-school kid.</p>

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<p>He took regular physics and got an A. He really enjoyed it, but it was not calculus based (maybe conceptual?) and I’m guessing it wasn’t very rigorous.</p>

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<p>The ‘Computer Science is Math’ school of thought is popular with places like Purdue or Cornell… A lot more about theory than it needs to be in my humble opinion, unless one gets into esoteric stuff (at the MS/PhD level especially) of things like cryptography, algorithm analysis, and the like, all of which sound great but do little to make a graduate have ‘global appeal’… At the other end you have all ‘applied’ stuff and no theory; not good either. </p>

<p>The key is to find a program that has a balance of the two, with theory in moderation, unless one has grad school aspirations. I mean, the only time I ever have to use O(log(N)) versus O(N) at work is when I’m interviewing candidates and want to shake them down a bit :-). </p>

<p>Some engineering graduates, myself included, may find (or already found out) that engineering overall is too regimented and structured in real life - if they’re the truly creative spirits, computer science may work better… In Civil Engineering everything had to be done this way and that, just because DIN says so (Deutsches Institut für Normung or some such acronym i.e. the building code :-)). In Comp Sci things are usually a lot more fluid and as long as you don’t write software for avionics or pacemakers you have lots more opportunity to do things your way.</p>

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<p>Most of the people that we’ve hired recently (local group) have MSCS (1) or Phds (3).</p>

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<p>I guess we work in vastly different environments. A feature spec that I read this past week assumed that the reader was familiar with some of the “basic” math theory used in our line of products.</p>

<p>The CS degree is often quite flexible allowing one to go into industry as a programmer or engineer or go to graduate school or become a research scientist. I wouldn’t say that it’s accurate that CS is just about teaching kids to become programmers when there’s a decent demand for scientists.</p>

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Physics basically comes in 3 flavors. The totally conceptual (very little math), aka Dr. Richard Muller’s text “Physics and Technology for Future Presidents”, the algebra-based, which uses most of the equations but not their calculus relationships, and the hard core, which sets all the equations in their calculus contexts. What S had in HS was probably algebra based. At least he has had something, which is a plus.</p>

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<p>What I find puzzling is that schools offer kids to accelerate in the younger years, but have nothing available at the end. Ds took algebra in 7th grade, but come high school this same school only had ap calc ab, which s took as a junior, then had no math to take. Once the math and science teachers left his very small school we transferred schools and the only other math class he could take was ap calc bc, there just wasn’t anything past that. Even with the bigger school with more offerings he is one of 3 students in ap calc bc. He did push to go from pre-cal to ap calc, and the school really was nervous about it and he ended up being the third kid to ever do it. I had to bring in things printed off the internet about how standard it was to go from pre-cal to ap calc.</p>

<p>We ran into the same thing with physics. He took honors physics as a junior because they only offered ap every other year. At his new school, like the previous one only had physics b - the one based on algebra, not calculus. There just weren’t any kids who could take it. </p>

<p>Schools around here just don’t cater to the math/science kids and seem to have way more classes in history/english. It will be a new world to ds to not be one of the only math/science kids and he can’t wait to have a classroom full of kids who don’t need to take two weeks to go over something.</p>

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<p>It’s a lot easier to offer algebra to a sixth-grader because you already have classes and teachers for it. It’s harder to go beyond the top-end for a small number of students. One of the best high-schools in my area serves a relatively small town - they contract with EPGY (Stanford University) for advanced math, science and computer science courses at the college level. Distance learning isn’t for everyone but at least they provide the option for students that want to do more than is locally offered. The courses are paid for by the school district.</p>

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<p>I am in the consumer electronics business - software and human-machine interface (HMI). That would be your middle of the road Linux or Windows CE or what not based high end portable gadget. We DIY the whole thing from logic design to software to manufacturing (large multinational). </p>

<p>In the software side of our world, probably 90% are CSE or EE, and 10% CS and HMI (I’m both) and hard as it is to believe, there’s little math involved. When we do (applied) research work, most of the math involves analysis of data from marketing clinics, subject trials, and the like, or setting up experiments. In my group nearly everyone has an MS or better and average age 40+.</p>

<p>About the most complicated math-intensive thing we would do would be graphics, and thanks to open software (Open GL ES) we rarely have to do computations for software. Other aspects of our software, such as location based services (LBS) do use math for position and the like, but again, it’s all abstracted away.</p>

<p>The EE’s and CSE’s work more closely with the hardware and rarely, if ever, is math of any kind involved unless someone is porting math.h to a new target :-)</p>

<p>Fortunately, other specialties like mechanical engineering make up the math deficiency; anyone who things writing software is hard should see what it takes to keep a device like a cellphone running from a thermal point of view…</p>

<p>Maybe it’s just me, but I have a feeling that colleges may be using math and science classes a bit too heavy-handed to screen out / weed out hapless underclasspeople… Sure, if one works in Wolfram Research (Mathematica) and the like, calculus type math will be useful; in Comp Sci, I have found courses like linear algebra, operations research, and lots of statistics to be far more useful. </p>

<p>I spent a few years in the corporate R&D labs and sure, they were using math and PhD’s and the like like it’s going out of style in research work; but that was back in the dark ages when we did not have things like open software plus a dozen vendors competing for our business… Sad to say but the bean counters finally figured out that it made no sense to spend serious money in basic research (think Janitor Memo) and scaled the place back to reality…</p>

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<p>We work in completely different worlds.</p>

<p>There is lots of work for the math types too but not as much as more applications-oriented stuff.</p>

<p>I’ve worked in both worlds.</p>

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<p>Does freshman year rigor vary from one engineering program to the next?</p>

<p>My HS Junior S wants Mech Eng with a passion and will have had plenty of math and science I hope at his private school: BC calc junior year, Advanced Topics senior year, Physics H sophomore, AP Mech junior, AP E&M senior, AP Chem, only Bio honors freshman.
He was able to get ahead in math starting in 5th grade which allowed him to get ahead in
the sciences ( as well as qualify for great summer programs) He’s definitely a mathy. Expecting 5s on APs, has 800s on subject tests, nearly the same SATs. He’s looking at top private schools.</p>

<p>When is it best to retake the AP class or move ahead a get the credit for Freshman Engineering majors?</p>

<p>Will colleges know where to place him or should he take the lesser load? It seems like an individual thing.</p>

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<p>How about taking a local university course this summer? He could get a much better feel for how prepared he is for university courses vs AP courses.</p>

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Yes, I believe it does vary significantly from program to program…</p>

<p>However, I believe that at many of the more rigorous schools they have a reasonalbly good handle on what they will allow a student to skip based on AP exams alone. At Caltech, for example, I think I have read that they don’t really allow students to skip out of much of anything - they manage to make their core courses difficult for everyone.</p>

<p>At a school like UCLA most students with a 5 on the BC exam would certainly be pretty safe skipping the differentiation material in the first semester of calculus. Skipping more than that sort of depends on the kid. Your son sounds pretty advanced. I wouldn’t expect that a kid who has already taken linear algebra aor MVC should start in first year calc. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t some risk involved in any choice. BC’s suggestion is a good one.</p>

<p>At my school (UCSD), 35 years ago, IIRC, they didn’t have such a good handle on what it took to skip introductory calculus. THey would have let me skip two quarters of calc, including the quarter about integration. I had already studied a year of calculus, but chose to only skip one quarter, which was a wise decision in my case.</p>

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<p>It is more than the difficulty of the classes. Classes aren’t strictly MVC or LA at the college level - they overlap. Also, hs classes aren’t uniform; therefore advisors aren’t always accurate or are reluctant to advice - they tell a kid to make his own decision between class A or B. </p>

<p>If a student takes a college level course in HS, there is likely a difference between college courses when he matriculates.</p>