and it often takes at least a year longer than many other undergraduate majors to get a degree
Excuse me? That is very uncharitable of you. I will accept your apology as soon as you offer one.Well, there you go. Can’t handle it, kick them all out and problem solved. No more bad accents. No more bad teachers. No more university.
Maybe try Phoenix online?
Our local Catholic College Prep high school requires 4 years of math, including Calculus. Now this is a college prep school - very tough and not everyone who applies is accepted if they cannot pass the entrance exam.
Much of how long it takes to get degrees depends on when the students register if they get in the required classes on the time frame they need to. For this spring semester, my son was initially placed on a waiting list for a required class, because it was full. Fortunately, a spot opened up, and he will be able to take the class. This class is a prerequisite for the next series he must take, so had he not been allowed in, it would have pushed everything back.
I randomly looked up various state requirements and it seems like the norm is 3 years of math, algebra I, II and geometry. Some require 4 years and CA only requires 2 to graduate.
I was in the honors track for math in high school and didn’t take calc, I had algebra I (in 8th grade), geometry, algebra II, pre calc/trig, and Stats (senior year it was a choice of ap stats or ap calc).Congratulations to your son for making Dean’s List!My son reads all his assignments before class. He made the Dean’s List this last semester, thank you very much. He is a smart student. When he does not understand something, he utilizes the professors’ office hours to get clarification. So when he does that, and the professor simply says, “Read the book,” it does nothing to help my son or any other student. What it does convey to my son is that the teacher really does not understand it either, since he obviously cannot explain it, and it caused the entire class to contact the Dean and aid in getting this professor removed from teaching.
Amen! The good news is enough students had this inferior professor (who had never taught before) and they raised such a stink that he is no longer teaching at the University.
In Virginia, students are required to have 4 years of high school level math.
C’mon, that was obvious sarcasm. I even put two smileys up.
Then what’s the problem? My parents didn’t complain all the times when I made Dean’s List. Neither did I. I put in the effort and thought I was adequately rewarded. I made no judgement on the teacher’s teaching abilities. I wouldn’t have had their patience, even if that one nuclear physics teacher did speak with a heavy and laughing Spanish accent. She did her best and there were others in class who were there to discuss things with. Classmates are after all part of the education process.
Hehe. I’m not sure where you are at in your education, but I’ll tell you a poorly kept secret: the entire undergraduate process for engineering degree is a weeding process. You have absolutely no idea how to be an engineer when you are handed your B.S. You’ve just proved that you’ve got the aptitude to become one. You learn to be an engineer the old fashioned way, apprenticeship. No, they don’t call it that anymore, but a rose is a rose…
I think that’s pretty much the case with everything. No degree actually prepares you to walk into a job and be effective from day one. Nearly every occupation I can think of starts with what is essentially apprenticeship or on the job training, or self training.
eek high school did very well in preparing me for college. But there was room for all kinds at my school. So I took honors classes and AP classes, while there were regular classes for others. I ended up with honors chemistry, chem II, honors (classic) physics, honors bio, AP english, College in the schools english, AP American and European history. And did very well. In fact I found many (most) college classes easier than my highschool classes, at least conceptually, though the amount of reading certainly went up. (Even law school did not provide conceptually difficult topics). Though I was a political science major with an economics minor, but at a liberal arts college where 2 science classes in different disciplines were required. I took field biology (which was awesome fun), and a computer science class.
Me, the self acknowledged terrible at math girl, had the highest score on the final, and ended up the top student in that class. (numbers are conceptually difficult for me. I can’t hold them in my memory long enough to do simple mental math, and I while I will understand the concept and the process to get the answer, I generally make many little mistakes getting to the answer).Wow, I just went and skimmed through that article. I need to go back and read it again. A quote:
It’s ok. Math is a universal language. And it is really entertaining to here your Chinese professor have a fit trying to pronounce parallelogram.
Absolutely. The track record is dismal. Until accountability is put into place it will only get worse. Survey said that 70% or more students cheat through college.
This makes me so mad. Apparently there was a big cheating scandal at my law school. When I was a 1L,a bunch of students got caught cheating. These kids would leave their notes in the bathroom and go on bathroom breaks and look up the answers in their outlines. A few even got caught, not shutting down exam soft and finishing the exam at home. (Several students were expelled, including one legacy kid).
That’s why a lot of professors give out open-book, open-notes and take-home exams. And if you think about it, closed-book tests are ridiculous. They test your recall abilities more than your knowledge and where do you work in industry under those conditions, except in emegencies? Lawyers and doctors and judges have books in their office and now a lot of information is online. Test on ability to reason and find information and not on ability to remember text.
True, but I would guess that they give them for the same reason engineering classes do. It is to weed out the ones who can’t cut it. The professors want to know if you can write out a reasonable answer that makes sense, under the time restraints imposed, under the stress of having to remember. They also want to know who has been coming to class or at least studying. Also if a student starts cheating in law school they have no business being a lawyer.
I support that. My class was very close to doing to same for a professor we had who just couldn’t teach. We have professor reviews at the end of each class though, so the extremely low feedback he received will probably suffice.My son reads all his assignments before class. He made the Dean’s List this last semester, thank you very much. He is a smart student. When he does not understand something, he utilizes the professors’ office hours to get clarification. So when he does that, and the professor simply says, “Read the book,” it does nothing to help my son or any other student. What it does convey to my son is that the teacher really does not understand it either, since he obviously cannot explain it, and it caused the entire class to contact the Dean and aid in getting this professor removed from teaching.
Square roots are very hard to do by hand. The best you can do is set up a recursion formula to try and get pretty close to right, or just use a guess and check method. It’s simply not worth it to teach it as anything more than a pure math technique. Teaching students how to reduce roots is quite useful (sqrt(8) to 2*sqrt(2) for example) on the other hand.
I know some people might want to freak out about this, but my empirical observations say that puzzleannie is correct. It’s becoming more and more common for engineers to do a 5-year degree. There are many reasons; one of these is just for the sake of your sanity. Maybe the old-timers will consider it weakness, but the work does wear you down over time. I was in a co-op programs, so extended my degree to 5 years and did 3 work terms (Which are very good for giving you some down time and clearing your head. And I do mean that yes, the work terms were easier and much less stressful, and of course getting paid is not a bad perk either).
Absolutely. Even if you ask engineering students, you will find that they will largely support this.
Actually, it’s often the other way around. Even with terrible professors, we can tell that they know what they’re talking about. They just can’t seem to explain it in any way that helps people understand (due to lack of English skills or lack of teaching skill, and tragically sometimes it’s both).
This. Just this. It’s a big fat lie of the school system that every single kid needs to go to university. We need people to go to trade schools, or art schools, or things like that. I’ve said it several times on this forum; if you don’t know what you want to study in university then it’s a waste of money for you to go more than 1 year (if you haven’t figured it out after year 1).
Well, you just notice it less in upper years (and it no longer feels like your actively being weeded out).
Usually they call it an internship now.
The official term is Engineer-in-Training (EIT).