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

[slpaulson]

I'd say intro to programming seems to weed out a lot of people who don't really know what programming is.

Our MIPS assembly class seemed to weed quite a few out too.

 

[ngvepforever2]

Originally posted by: Gibson486

Originally posted by: Legend

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.

The company I work for built their original products with ultra cheap hardware that used Assembly 8051. They were able to sell their products cheaper than the competition could manufacture.

It has it's uses.

I own the assembly language. While everyone was claiming how hard it was, I breezed right through it.

Me too. Got an A on the midterm and Final. Got the programs done on time with no problem. But the sad true is that I won't use it and eventually forget it

Regards

ng

 

[So]

EE -- all the older people I knew who had done EE told me it would be electromagnetics, but in my school, it was Control Systems. Simply because the E-mag teacher we had was excellent and very fair, whereas the control professor was a nice guy outside of class, but a giant douche on class related matters. His lectures were basically him rambling and ranting about how easy the material was without any real organization or effort to make it clear. Plus, the situation wasn't helped by the combination of his egyptian accent and a bad lisp.

 

[zebano]

Data Structures.

 

[DPmaster]

I was CSE and I'd also say it had to be Data Structures. I just remember the very first class was Intro to Programming. There were 3 of these classes - roughly 120-130 people in each class. By the time we graduated, the graduating class was roughly 23-25 people.

 

[alphatarget1]

Supposedly statics but I find that class super easy.

Maybe physics (mechanics)...

 

[Supermercado]

CompSci at Clemson here. I've been graduated for about a year and a half now, so I don't remember the nitty gritty on all the classes, but I think the one that was toughest was CS 212, which was data structures and algorithms. It almost got me, but I made it through with a C. Before that, 101 was actually very tough when I was a freshman; the teacher was just plain terrible and more concerned with his consulting than with teaching, I think. I want to say that the failure rate was more than 50% that semester.

 

[RaDragon]

Production Operations Analysis

 

[OneOfTheseDays]

i don't know how EE's are able to stay in that major. I'm CSE, so I only need to take a few EE classes, but my God they are some of the worst classes I've taken. Not only are they insanely difficult, it seems like there is no such thing as a decent EE professor.

 

[jpeyton]

Originally posted by: CptObvious
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 have my BS in Bio and O-Chem was easy for me. I thought biochemistry was much harder.

The hardest class I took as an undergrad was a graduate level MCB course; it was also the most rewarding class. Graduate classes were more advanced, but at least they were focused; nothing was glossed over, and every mechanism was explained in excruciating detail.

But I was weeded-out as a sophomore pre-engineering student in my efundies class. Electrical circuits was a concept I had a difficult time grasping...sucks too because I had all my calculus finished, all my physics finished, and finished statics as well.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: So
EE -- all the older people I knew who had done EE told me it would be electromagnetics, but in my school, it was Control Systems. Simply because the E-mag teacher we had was excellent and very fair, whereas the control professor was a nice guy outside of class, but a giant douche on class related matters. His lectures were basically him rambling and ranting about how easy the material was without any real organization or effort to make it clear. Plus, the situation wasn't helped by the combination of his egyptian accent and a bad lisp.

I don't think Emag was terrible (although, i did get a D in that class). My teacher sucked hard though. his teaching method was him rambling about how you can "easily" figure out the equations through differential equations. I always got what ahppened, but for some reason, during the tests, nothing came up correct mathmatically, so i would always get partial credit by just explaing, in words, how to solve the problem.

 

[Zoblefu]

All the people that say "Data Structures" or any type of math had it easy compared to my school

The hardest "weed-out" class would be PLC (programming language concepts) where you had to not only learn the language (Scheme) with no instruction, you had a different (lengthy) programming project due twice a week.

This course is usually taken at the start of Junior year. But for those of you who might think that's late for a "weed-out" course, this is after most students would have taken Calc I, II, III, Diff EQ I & II, Data Structures, Physics I II & III...

It wasn't easy But I enjoy a challenge. I'm glad I went through it.

 

[Gibson486]

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
i don't know how EE's are able to stay in that major. I'm CSE, so I only need to take a few EE classes, but my God they are some of the worst classes I've taken. Not only are they insanely difficult, it seems like there is no such thing as a decent EE professor.

I do it b/c I love it. Atleast the circuits side of things, now. It's crazy, b/c when i first entered college, i wanted to do stuff with waves so i could work on cell phones. Emag definately changed that ( I find teh stuff very boring, although I do find EMC stuff interesting). The problem with the classes in EE are that they are really geared towrds using the stuff to use for work after college. They assume you learned all your physics in freshman year, but the problem is that freshman year physics is a weed out class, especially Physics involving feilds, electrons and waves. As a result, the very important stuff is left out and the class becomes multitudes harder.

 

[purbeast0]

Originally posted by: lnguyen

Originally posted by: purbeast0
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 took it w/ plane her first year teaching here She made the first exam wwaaay to easy... i got 98 or something ridiculous. the next one kicked the average down to 60 something I think.. heh.

I've seen a lot of CS majors get hit by the 311/330 combo tho. All of enee is weed-out IMO.. ha. 244 being the first one.

311 was a PITA as well, however it seemed to make more sense than 250 did, and as wierd as Hughe is, she wasn't as wierd as Postow heh. I did decent in 311 and 411 w/her. Still, they were tough.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

EE major, almost all of them are weed out classes
First EE class we have is called Fundamentals of Electrical Engineering and only has about a 2/3 pass rate. Two semesters later you take Signals and Systems where at least another 1/3 of the students fail every semester. There are (several) other tough classes but I think they really try to grind out those that don't belong through attrition.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Electromagnetics (junior level), Linear Signals & Systems (continuous time - junior level, I found discrete time much easier), VLSI classes (mainly analog VLSI - digital is dead easy ) and I guess the junior level device physics class. Quantum physics and bandgap engineering FTW! The main VLSI prof here (Dr. Randy Geiger) is known to enjoy pw3ning students...

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Originally posted by: Sudheer Anne
i don't know how EE's are able to stay in that major. I'm CSE, so I only need to take a few EE classes, but my God they are some of the worst classes I've taken. Not only are they insanely difficult, it seems like there is no such thing as a decent EE professor.

It's not that bad... at least that's I told myself when I signed on for the MS/PhD track a year ago after getting my BSEE

 

[Dissipate]

Here at UCSD the weed out class is CSE 12 - Introduction to Data Structures. I managed to pull out with a 'B.'