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What is/was your college major's "weed-out" class?

NuclearNed

NuclearNed

Raconteur
Kind of inspired by a thread in the software forum.

My college major was computer science with emphasis on software engineering. Our "weed-out" class was IBM 370 architecture assembly language. It was a sophomore level class taught by the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject. As a matter of fact, the instructor's book was the textbook we used.

It was a known fact that in our department, this class was designed to "weed-out" the people who really weren't serious about their computer science studies. If you couldn't complete this course, it was probably a good bet that you needed to find another major. Needless to say, I and many others had to repeat this course due to its difficulty level.
 
here is what really torques me off...

Penn State uses
1)3 dimentional vector calculus
2)Differential Equations
3)Physics (electromagnetism)
and
4)Calculus based probability

as weed out classes for computer science majors...
 
Probably data structures... It wasn't a terribly difficult class, and looking back I think it was quite easy - but the people who weren't really cut out for comp sci changed majors after that.

We lost about 2/3 of the students who started in comp sci to other majors. But I started school toward the end of the dot-com boom (lots of people in it just for the money).
 
When I was a bio major it was organic chemistry. It was successful in weeding me out 🙂

My friend in med school tells me he hasn't had to study o-chem since
 
I hated assembly language. Absolutely no use for it in my opinion unless if you plan to actually do work in that field in the future... I don't think I did well in that class. Fortunately I transferred schools soon afterwards and didn't have to worry about it anymore. 🙂

At my second school, a private university, I don't recall any "weed out" classes. To be honest, it was all so easy compared to the public university (U of MN IT). I do recall many people having problems in the low-level programming classes, which were java based. It didn't make sense to me, they were easy classes...
 
I am also computer science, and at DePaul the class was Computer Systems. Functional ML programming is not fun.
 
I was computer engineering for awhile and it seemed like the whole program was designed to weed people out, There's some ridculous percentage of kids who drop out/switch colleges/major it's like 60% during the first year. I made it througth that but when I got to assembly language and started thinking about another 4 years of learning programming i was like hell no. Now I'm IT and at least enjoying my major..whether or not I can get a job when I graduate is another story.
 
English 365-Secondary Teaching Methods : devising your own lesson plans, days, weeks, and Unit lessons. Then going over heavy schools of literay schools all while fulfilling 20+ hours at a local school.
 
Here at Georgia Tech, there's a lot of weed out classes for the school in general...
Calculus I & II (especially II)
Physics I & II (again, especially II)
For my major (Computer Eng), it's ECE 2025 (Intro to Signal Processing).
 
at UMD it was CMSC250 - Discrete Math.

one of my roomates took it 3 times and failed it all 3 times. After failing a class 2 times you are not allowed to take it again and have to switch majors, but they allowed him to take it 3 times. he failed it again and had to switch majors 🙁

I remember our final, the average was a 29%. a C was a fvcking 29%! luckily I got a 39% so I did pretty good on the final. It was a really REALLY touch class.
 
I was an ME at Virginia Tech. The freshman "Engineering Fundamentals" classes were pretty harsh (EF 1015/1016). Lots of business majors after those two.
 
Data Structures tends to weed out people...
But Formal Methods and Languages with the professor I have would surely weed out a lot of people. Required class, my professor wrote the book we use, his class is really fast paced, it's interesting stuff but hard to digest , hopefully we'll get a nice curve at the end of the semester.

Regards

ng
 
Originally posted by: mitmot
COMP15 - Data Structures..

ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
Click to expand...


that class if F'n terrible....

but my weeding class was the entire freshman year, circuits, Emag, and Linear Systems.
 
Telecommunications management. It was a business class taught by a professor who had an EE undergrad. Gawd, that class nearly killed me...I knew I didn't want to be an engineer when I started school and then I hit that class.

Edit: My major was MIS.
 
Mechanical Engineering - Statics. If you couldn't get through Statics you couldn't finish the major.

Statics -> Mechanics of Materials -> Dynamics -> Design of Machine Elements -> few others I can't remember.
 
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