Taking two math courses in the summer

[octahedron]

Is doing Calculus III and Differential Equations in the summer advisable? 6-week term, with 1 hour 15 minutes lectures everyday. What does everyone here think?

 

[Asphodel]

Possible? Yeah. Likely to pass both? Probably if you work at it hard enough.

Advisable, or at all a good idea? Hell no.



From someone that rushed through their math prereqs a bit too quickly - take your time with it, make sure you master the concepts and techniques. You'll be using them quite a lot later, and if you crowd them in early just to get done with them, you'll end up regretting it later when you have to go over everything again on your own time while keeping up with other classes.

 

[PowerIso]

I agree with Asphodel. Especially with Diffy Q. Calculus III you could probably do it every day for 1 hour and 15 minutes and learn a great deal, but in differential equations, I think it's better to let ideas sink in because it's a very important class.

 

[octahedron]

A lot of people seem to be against the idea, and frankly, I'm not too big on it either. But they would open up upper-div courses for me, and there's the added benefit of who will be teaching the courses this summer (my two favorite math professors!). Thanks guys, I'll have to give this a great deal of thought. Oh, and comments from others who have taken summer courses before are welcome!

 

[kuahji]

I was kinda thinking about taking Calc III during the summer as well, but I think I'm going to pass. For me, I can pass a math course that is rushed through, but the light bulbs just don't go off until the information sinks in... basically what I mean is, a lot of the stuff I learn in summer courses I soon forget. But I'm sure if you're willing to work hard enough you can do it, also if the professors are better than average, then go for it. I'm not sure which is worse, forgetting some of the information or getting stuck with a bad professor & just not learning half of it (unless you're really good at self study).

 

[daveb]

I took Calc III and Differential Equations (lower division) at Santa Monica CC during the summer and got an A in both, so it all depends on how comfortable you would feel with the material.

 

[h2oski1326]

What are you studying?

What else will you be doing this summer? Working?

I agree with the posters above, if you can avoid it, it would be a good idea. Six weeks is far too short to learn everything in both of those subjects and retain much. If knowledge in those subjects only needs to be relatively superficial they you could probably get away with it but you will be much better off in the long run if you didn't do this.

At my university we call those courses Maymester courses, which occur at the end of the spring semester, as opposed to the traditional eight week summer courses, which follow Maymester courses.

Do they offer either one of these courses in an eight week version? You could take them back to back over the summer. Of course, anything you take over the summer you aren't going to learn as much as you would during the semester, in general

 

[Shackleford]

I'm glad I'm taking my time with math courses. I'm in Cal 3 right now. I might take an 11-week summer Linear Algebra course.

 

[mace2]

It's definitely doable, but you should mainly just ask yourself if you'll stay on top of the workload. If you can be disciplined about it, go for it.

 

[octahedron]

What are you studying?

I'm a math major, a little late to the game as you can see (doing Calc II at the moment). Calc III would allow me to take Analysis, and Linear Algebra would open up Abstract Algebra for me, but I don't want to rush through Linear in the summer. Differential equations isn't all that important (prereq-wise), except for the fact that a good professor is teaching it.

Oh and I'll probably double major/minor in Electrical Engineering, though that is more of a career backup thing, in case math doesn't work out. So maybe I'll be needing more than a superficial knowledge in these courses, if that's what I'll be getting out of a summer course?