College/Uni degrees: golden ticket or worthless paper?

[xbl0x180]

Could be even more than that.. At my University, they made you either take or test out of Algebra and Trig. Then it was the Calc 1-3 gauntlet. Follow up with Differential Equations before moving on to Partials, which was a 400 level graduate course.

I'm sure it varies by college, but you're looking at your 6th semester if done in sequence at my Uni. That's assuming you did the 2 prereqs at the same time.

Grad-level or upper division? I pretty much crashed and bruned on Ordinary DEs with a "C." I tested out of trig, but took it over the summer as a refresher. Pretty much all you gotta do there is remember all the common angles and how they translate to radians... because the further you go up in calculus, the less you will use "degrees" to describe measurements. They'd rather you stick with "pi" and "theta" (i.e., "the integration of such and such equation from 0 to 2pi with respect to a value blahblahblah"). Conversions from degrees to radians become kind of important during the second quarter/class of calculus, where students are exposed to integration by substitution. I'd think of this second semester as the most important class in lower division calc since it also goes into series... which will pop up AGAIN in the future during ODEs

[burgerkingdiamond]

Could be even more than that.. At my University, they made you either take or test out of Algebra and Trig. Then it was the Calc 1-3 gauntlet. Follow up with Differential Equations before moving on to Partials, which was a 400 level graduate course.

I'm sure it varies by college, but you're looking at your 6th semester if done in sequence at my Uni. That's assuming you did the 2 prereqs at the same time.

Grad-level or upper division? I pretty much crashed and bruned on Ordinary DEs with a "C." I tested out of trig, but took it over the summer as a refresher. Pretty much all you gotta do there is remember all the common angles and how they translate to radians... because the further you go up in calculus, the less you will use "degrees" to describe measurements. They'd rather you stick with "pi" and "theta" (i.e., "the integration of such and such equation from 0 to 2pi with respect to a value blahblahblah"). Conversions from degrees to radians become kind of important during the second quarter/class of calculus, where students are exposed to integration by substitution. I'd think of this second semester as the most important class in lower division calc since it also goes into series... which will pop up AGAIN in the future during ODEs

all of the series shit that comes up in Calc II sucks. I don't remember you needing that for ODE's though.

[brentsg]

Grad-level or upper division?

I'm not sure how you differentiate between the two. Mine was definitely only a requirement for an engineering MS. It was in the highest numbering level for engineering students for sure, though it might have had a different scheme for math majors. I don't recall if it was flat our required, or if I had a choice and picked it. I was specialized in computational models for fluid mechanics and heat transfer (supersonic combustion, specifically) though, so it was highly useful.

[xbl0x180]

I definitely remember having to deal with series in my ODE class, which is why I blew it since that was the section from calc II that I totally bombed and forgot about. Coincidentally, I'd think of series as being used in finances (along with "probability" math, statistics, and accounting).

As far as "upper division" goes, it's a term we used to refer to undergrad major-required courses. Grad courses are grad courses. If PDE came after ODE, then I assumed it was an undergrad upper division class.

[GaijinPunch]

I'm not sure how you differentiate between the two.

Generally if the 3-digit university code starts w/ a 1 or 2 (lower), or a 3 or 4 (upper). In my school, these were decoupled from majors. There were prerequisites for any course, but if you met them, you could take it. I could've taken taken upper division physics courses (Physics 301, 401 for example) in my liberal arts path, if I had the prerequisites. Of course, I didn't, as I was taking marijuana 401.