DS went for advising to find that he’s hit an academic roadblock. He’s due to take FI 301, FI 302 and MKT 300 next semester but his adviser neglected to tell him that he had to take AC 210 this semester as a prerequisite for all these courses. The adviser recommended that he petition the Dept Chair to be allowed to take AC 210 concurrently with the finance and marketing courses but I’m concerned that he might be at a huge disadvantage. Has anyone taken these courses? How much do they draw on accounting?
If he can’t take the finance courses this semester or over the summer he’ll hit another roadblock next year since he won’t have the prerequisite courses for the FI 410 and FI 412.
I’d really appreciate any advice or insights. I’m freaking out slightly.
Thanks.
I don’t know if taking concurrently will matter, but I wanted to make the following point.
It helps if a student writes out his multi-year schedule and includes notes of any prereqs, so he can be sure to have what’s needed.
Your son can email the profs who teach that class and ask if concurrent will be fine
I’m not familiar enough with DegreeWorks, but does it catch prereqs?
I also wonder if he can start the class online at this point somewhere to get ahead.
https://www.studyblue.com/notes/university-of-alabama-tuscaloosa/c/accounting-210/842/0
also
https://www.■■■■■■■.com/university-of-alabama-ua/ac/210-intro-to-accounting/
Thanks for the reply and your links @mom2collegekids. Can you give me a clue to the site of the second link? I guess it’s one not allowed here so it’s been blanked out. I think your idea of starting ahead on accounting is a good one. DH and I were thinking DS could use the month long Christmas vacation to work through the textbook for AC 210 (assuming he is allowed to enroll concurrently).
I don’t know about Degree Works, but DS has learned the hard way that he has to check the prerequisites himself in future.
Absolutely. Students have to stay a step head.
Is your son an Acctg major or what?
For anybody in any major: KNOW the requirements of your degree/major path under the catalog or year that you entered. KNOW it YOURSELF, and know it well! The advisors can’t know for sure every detail of every major, even in their own school. They CAN and DO make mistakes.
This is a very unfortunate situation! Hopefully the B-school will be lenient and allow concurrent enrollment.
FYI - EVERY business major has the EXACT same list of prerequisites before they are admitted into the “Upper Division” of the business school (300+ level business courses), regardless of major. There are a number of requirements, outlined clearly in the catalog, including two “Lower Level Functional Field Courses” that are: AC210 and LGS200.
These have remained the same for at least two decades, so there is absolutely no excuse for any advisor or UA business student to not know these requirements exist. Sorry if this sounds “preachy”, but this is a perfect cautionary tale for students to know their program, know their options, and chart their own path.
It is important for each student to plan ahead and make sure that all the pre-reqs are taken.
I’m not accusing the OP’s child, but sometimes kids don’t remember what they were told and once they find themselves in a pickle, it’s easy for them to say, “no one told me that I needed…”
Another problem is this…Kids also change their schedules AFTER advising and when they do so, they drop a needed class because they forgot that it’s a prereq. Or, after getting their proposed schedules approved, but they can’t get into the class section they wanted, and don’t want the section with an 8am or 3pm class-time, so they nix that class…again forgetting that it’s a prereq for a class next semester.
I don’t know how advising is done in the B-school, but generally there is an 8 semester (maybe for pre-B there is a 4 semester) guide that lists courses to take by semester. Does the B-school have/use something like that?
DS got permission to concurrently enroll yesterday so he should be ok. He honestly thought that his adviser was there to prevent the kind of situation he found himself in. It was naive on his part but he’s learned a valuable life lesson. He’s going to self study for AC 210 now and over Christmas to get up to speed. If anyone has taken FI 301 and FI 302 and can give him some advice as to what parts of AC 210 are most important for the finance classes he would really appreciate it. Perhaps if @SEA_tide sees this he might have some insights to share. Thanks for your study links @mom2collegekids, they look very useful.
AC 210 is one of the more difficult lower division business courses at UA, mainly because it is two courses combined into one.
Apart from financial ratios and knowledge of interest rates, 300-level finance courses tend to use more calculus and algebra than anything.
I recommend taking the 300-level business courses online if possible as it frees up ones schedule for other classes.
What do they use Calc for in a finance class? Profit under a sales curve or something?
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He honestly thought that his adviser was there to prevent the kind of situation he found himself in.
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Advisers can’t really prevent this situations because all they do is a modest “look over” and then lift the registration hold. The student is then free to really do whatever he wants, include changing his schedule…and often students do that. They may even later forget that they did change the schedule that their advisor originally saw.
The adviser sees the schedule prior to registration, so on the day of registration “anything goes.” A student may find that a desired section is full, but the other one is at an undesirable time.
The advisor SHOULD be there to prevent that kind of situation, although my D found the advisors in the business school to be pretty worthless. She and I were totally on top of the catalog requirements, though. What year is your son, AlbionGirl? How did he get into Upper Division without having had AC210?
M2CK, there are checksheets for the business school that show the flow of classes. I also found the catalog to be very clear on the prerequisites and requirements. The only problem we ever encountered with respect to prerequisites was a 400 level Econ class where the professor teaching it decided that another course (also taught by him) that was NOT a prerequisite should be, and he told everyone who hadn’t had the other course to drop. At the time, there was absolutely no indication that one class was needed for the other. This prof said he had been asking the university to make it a prerequisite, but they didn’t. Fortunately my D had 3 semesters left at the time, as the non-prerequisite “prerequisite” wasn’t offered that semester for her to take. I think there’s now a note on the course description recommending that the other class be taken first, but AFAIK, it’s still not a prerequisite.
@CyclonesGrad - When I got my MBA from Michigan 25 years ago, two semesters of UG calculus was a prerequisite, but we never actually used it, and I took beginning, intermediate, and advanced finance. Occasionally a professor would say something like “for those of you who remember your calculus, delta x over delta y reduces to dx/dy.” We had to memorize a ton of formulas. We didn’t even use calculus in microeconomics or statistics.
Now calculus is much more used in undergraduate finance, which allows students to actually derive and better understand many of the formulas. Wall Street started to hire more mathematics and physics graduates; finance programs needed to keep up so that graduates would be hired.
Here’s one example thanks to Captain Google: “Derivative securities such as options, warrants, and convertible bonds are modeled using calculus, and the movements of each are based on first, second, and third derivatives of the movements of the tracked stock.”
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M2CK, there are checksheets for the business school that show the flow of classes. I
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Right…and there are some for many or all majors. This isn’t new. We had those when I was in college. You followed the suggested semester sequence, you checked off the boxes of required classes.
With students doing different concentrations, minors, second majors, coming in with AP credits, etc, the students have to stay on top of their desired goals. There isn’t a lot of hand-holding in college. If you have a child who is not the type to “stay on top of things” and often “just assumes” (I have a child who was like that), then the parent may have to oversee some of this…or risk that the student will not graduate on time.
DegreeWorks was in its infancy when my kids were at Bama, so I don’t know if it can catch some of these issues, but I wouldn’t solely rely on that either.
AlbionGirl, I asked my daughter, who is a senior Econ/Finance/Math major and has taken all of the courses you mentioned, whether she thought she would have been at a disadvantage if she hadn’t taken AC 210 first. She just got back to me, and said definitely not for FI302 and MKT300, and that she didn’t remember much need for accounting in FI301, either. Of course, if you’ve HAD the prerequisite class, you may not even realize that things you learned in that class are being used in another because it’s a terminology or overall concept thing, rather than a specific application. That said, I was a business major way back when, and I don’t remember needing accounting for finance and marketing courses, either.
Thanks to everyone for their input especially @beth’s mom, @SEA_tide, and @mom2collegekids. DS has successfully signed up for his classes next semester and is checking the rest of his schedule to ensure that he notes all future prerequisites.
Hope you all have a Happy Halloween!
Good news! 