My son was accepted as to UCD as a Chemical Engineer major and is a current Freshman. He seems to be intimidated by the math. So he is really undecided. He has not gone to to see an advisor because he thinks they will only advise him for Chem Engineering.
I am worried that he is just taking a bunch of Gen Ed classes without direction. I understand the need to figure out what he wants to do in his life, but are there certain key classes that he should be taking each quarter so he will not fall further behind? Like should he take, a minimum, a math, a science and a writing or English class (or is this just normal for high school) then add some General Ed. classes that interest him?
For Spring, I asked him to consider taking CHE 002B and MAT 016B or at least one of these.
Am I just a helicopter mom worrying about nothing because it is just his first year of major/interest exploration?
Fall Qtr classes taken/passed = 13 hours:
CHE 002A General Chemistry
ENL 003 Intro to Literature
MAT 012 Precalculus
ECH 080 Chem Eng Profession
Winter Qtr classes in progress are = 17 hours:
GEL 016 The Oceans
HIS 017B History of the US
MAT 016A Calculus
NAS 001 Intro to Native American Studies
NPB 010 Elements of Human Physiology
Spring Qtr registration today = 17 hours:
ETX 030 - Chemical Use and Abuse
PHI 001 - Intro To Philosophy
POL 002 - Intro Comp Politics
PSC 001 - General Psychology
HIS 080 - U S in the Middle East
Can he get advisement outside of his current major, like with a department he might be more interested in?
Thanks!
Does he have any ideas on what he might want to switch to? I would agree that CHE 2B and MAT 16B would cover his bases for most cases (I’m assuming engineering is essentially out at this point with the math requirements). Chem might be unnecessary depending on what exactly he’s thinking of going into…and actually calc might be too, but there are still a good amount of social science majors that require at least the 16 series.
As far as whether there are certain key classes, that depends entirely on what majors he’s looking at. If he’s looking at STEM (again, I’m assuming that’s essentially out at this point, but correct me if I’m wrong), he’d generally have a lot more prereqs to worry about than a non-STEM major. In any case, he’d be working on lower div prereqs and GEs right now anyway. So long as he’s working on some prereqs for some majors of interest and is making sure to take classes that cover his GEs (which the prereqs generally do anyway), it’s fine.
He can talk to an adviser outside his current major. He’ll have to look into who the adviser is and reach out to them on his own, but he can definitely talk to someone in a department of interest. I know I did that with computer science for a few quarters before my double major was officially declared.
Oh, engineering does have mandatory advising holds for one quarter each year depending on your last name. That’d be a good time to try to talk to someone about switching out if he hasn’t already. I’m not sure exactly how they handle the mandatory advising on someone that’s switching out, but it’s worth a shot and he’d have to go in anyway if he’s still a declared engineering major.
@phantomVirgo Thank you. Over the December holiday break, he was talking to me about Nutrition Science.
http://catalog.ucdavis.edu/Programs/nutsci/nutscireqt.html
I thought he had a registration hold for Spring because he had a mandatory advisement for Engineering, but he was able to register for Spring ok so far.
@PhantomVirgo Just had a brief text from him letting me know that these classes he registered for correlate with social science majors. So I maybe he is leaning towards a social science major now.
The advising deadline for this quarter is March 15. He can register now, but if his hold isn’t lifted he won’t be able to edit his schedule after that deadline. If he doesn’t get it lifted by the time fall registration happens, he won’t be able to register for fall quarter.
If he’s still considering nutrition science, I would definitely say to have MAT 16B and CHE 2B in there. Otherwise what he has looks fine for social science majors.