durt said:
While I guess the jist of what you're saying, Dr. Proof, may be true (i.e., that one shouldn't get ahead of oneself), I don't see anything wrong with placing out of college classes if the student knows the material well. It seems like it would just be a waste of time to take them. Why would someone "take the classes anyway and capture the good grades"? Why not take another class and actually learn something?
go quantum! seems to be going to college for the first time; therefore, it would be to his benefit to take some classes that he is already familiar with. By doing this, he will get a feel for how fast-paced college undergrad math and physics courses are, and he will gain some insight into how different teachers have different teaching methods and grading systems (for example, some don't collect homework, so your entire grade is based on three test scores, and if you make some silly mistakes on those tests, you can kiss an A or a B, and possibly a C or D goodbye). Also, let's face it, there's both good and bad teachers out there. You can't ever be guaranteed of having a good teacher, so when you have a bad teacher, you need to learn to survive on your own by reading the book yourself (duh, everyone should be doing that anyway). Additionally, the college may decide to use a really bad (difficult to understand) text for the class, in which case you may have to go buy several other books just to understand the class (Ah, the things they don't tell you in freshman orientation!). Thankfully, for go quantum!, he seems to have a lot of drive to learn and progess in life, so that will serve him well in college.
Now, another reason to not place out of college classes, even when you think you know the material well, is that you
think you know the material well. So, you know the material well? O.K., but according to whose standards?
Understanding the concepts and knowing how to solve the problems is not good enough in college. Remember what I said before: when you are at college, you play the
teachers' games according to
their rules. You can understand concepts, great. You can solve problems, great. But do you know what it's like to be under the clock, taking a test in a timed situation. In one of my college Physics classes, I mastered the concepts and the problems; I've always been a naturally-good problem solver because my mind actually thinks in terms of real-life problems (that's why I struggle with upper-level, more abstract math classes). When test times came around, there was no sweat. YEAH RIGHT! I solved those problems as fast as I could; I had the material mastered, so I screamed through all the tests. I still didn't finish early! I always finished with just a few seconds (literally) to spare. Almost everyone else who did very well on their homework did not finish the tests and got C's on the tests. I finished my tests (and got all A's), not just because I understood the material, but because I learned how my teacher played the game, and I learned to play the game by
his rules. His game was this: "If you know the material like the back of your hand, and you work as fast as you can on my tests, you will complete my tests before time runs out." I learned his game rules the hard way at first, I got a 25/100 on my first test, then I got a 100/100 on the midterm exam and a 98/100 on the final exam (which was cumulative).
All I am saying is this: take the first year of college easy, start off slow. Let yourself get used to college life, let yourself mature a little. (And don't take offense to that comment, because
everyone matures during their first two years of college). go quantum!, just make sure that your goal is to learn and graduate, not just to get a degree.
And no, I don't think it's a waste of time to take a math or physics class that you could just place out of. There is no math or physics course at the college level that I have taken from which I did not learn something and from which I did not benefit in my later classes.
Thanks
