Hello,
I have some questions about UM, as my son was recently admitted to the LAC. Any course he should go ahead and take this summer? Any known weedout courses or courses that can sneak up on you for basic freshmen curriculum? Maybe take CALC 1 this summer or he may need to take Spanish freshmen year.
thanks for your help and GO BLUE!
When you say LAC, do you mean the Residential College?
Here are some: Calc 2 & 3, Organic Chem, Econ 401. In generally they are the large lecture classes students need for med school or certain more difficult majors. No language class falls into that category, or any that I know of in the RC. I would encourage your son to take the ‘intensive’ language classes, they are 2 semesters rolled into one, are a lot smaller, and will help him actually learn the target language more thoroughly. He can discuss them with his advisor.
LS&A classes usually taken by engineers fall into that category frequently. Fortunately the students are usually graded by section, which will not penalize them if they have an inferior prof. or GSI.
Some of the ‘weed out’ classes are just more difficult because they recently changed the curriculum and don’t have a handle on the workload yet. Diff Eq (Calc 4) and Org Chem lab comes to mind.
Calc 2 &3 (even Calc 1 for some kids) and Organic Chem 1&2 are kinda brutal for the uninitiated. If your kiddo only needs one year of Calc or Orgo Chem 1…take it at a junior college that for sure has transferable credit. But if he’ll be taking a whole series, best to start at UMich to understand the different way they do things…and be fully prepared for the next class in the series.