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Advice on Summer School Courses

 
Old 05-02-2010 at 11:01 PM   #1
_Mike
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Advice on Summer School Courses
Hi, I'm contemplating taking either Linear Algebra (with P. Ryan) or Animal Behaviour (with B. Beston) in the spring term. Can anyone make any recommendations on which I should take? Has anyone had either of the profs before? If so, do they make the material easy to understand and how fair are their tests?

To give some perspective, I plan on majoring in psych next year. I also really enjoy math; I'm decent at it, but not amazing, however, I really like doing math homework. I also found some 1B03 tests from previous semesters and they seemed fairly straightforward -- I learned a lot of the material in the Calculus and Vectors high school course.

I'm interested to hear some opinions! I'm planning on checking out both of these courses in the next two days.
Old 05-02-2010 at 11:14 PM   #2
nessa18
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I took Linear Algebra last semester so can give u advice on that. The first half of the course was alright and it wasnt too bad and the first midterm was actaully really good. The later stuff in the course gets harder and the second midterm was brutal ( everyone ended up getting bell curved). The exam was similar to the second midterm but you get a lot more time to prepaare for it but I still found it really hard. We also had assignments we had to do on this website evey week and they were time consumming at times but overall the assignments were alright. My advice would be that if you dont really need the course then dont take it because it was really stressful towards the end and brought my average down.
Old 05-03-2010 at 01:48 AM   #3
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1B03 isn't particularly difficult, a lot of the stuff just tends to be rather abstract and new to students and really requires you to grasp the concepts and rules to do well in it. I took it last year and it wasn't too difficult, especially if you like doing your homework.

Animal Behavior is always an easy course (it is almost all common sense stuff that tends to be really easy to remember because of how intuitive it is) and Dr. Beston (took Stats with him this year) is decent prof, but the course can be a bit boring. I'd personally save the course for the school year since it's a rather easy course to take when you're doing 4 other courses, it'd be advisable to take a harder Psych course (ex Neuroscience) as a summer course rather than animal behavior. If there's nothing else you wanna take, Animal Behaviour isn't a bad choice.
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Old 05-03-2010 at 07:00 AM   #4
_Mike
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tailsnake View Post
I'd personally save the course for the school year since it's a rather easy course to take when you're doing 4 other courses, it'd be advisable to take a harder Psych course (ex Neuroscience) as a summer course rather than animal behavior. If there's nothing else you wanna take, Animal Behaviour isn't a bad choice.
I really wanted to do that, but Sensory Processes isn't offered until Term 2 and I was contemplating doing Psych 2RA3 (and probably 2RB3), but because I'm not registered in a level II program like psych or cognitive science of language, I'm not permitted to take the course(s). :(
Old 05-04-2010 at 05:52 AM   #5
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If you're a visual learner and enjoy doing math in your head for example, then I highly recommend Math 1B03. It will be useful if you ever end up taking upper year maths/physics.
Old 05-04-2010 at 03:51 PM   #6
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Hey, I was just wondering. I was thinking of taking Biology 2C02 (Genetics). i missed the first class and there is suppose to be a tutorial that day. Do tutorials start the first week of summer school or is it on the second week. Can sumone please clarify. Thanks
Old 05-04-2010 at 04:29 PM   #7
_Mike
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Quote:
Originally Posted by macsci View Post
If you're a visual learner and enjoy doing math in your head for example, then I highly recommend Math 1B03. It will be useful if you ever end up taking upper year maths/physics.
I don't see myself taking any upper-level math or physics courses, however it does say that it is recommended for the level II program I want (Hon. Psych., Neuro., & Behaviour). Can anyone in the program comment about the usefulness of taking Linear Algebra?
Old 05-04-2010 at 06:02 PM   #8
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Quote:
Originally Posted by _Mike View Post
I don't see myself taking any upper-level math or physics courses, however it does say that it is recommended for the level II program I want (Hon. Psych., Neuro., & Behaviour). Can anyone in the program comment about the usefulness of taking Linear Algebra?
It's not useful to you at all, I took it because it was recommended and I've barely used anything from Math 1A03 this year let alone Math 1B03/1AA3. It's not a bad course to take, but don't go into it thinking it'll be a major help for you in the Psych program.
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Old 05-04-2010 at 06:06 PM   #9
macsci
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Ya, don't take linear algebra, it won't come in handy in anything non physical science (ie psych). The only fringe benefit I see is if you're gonna be doing some sort of computational models, which I doubt you will need to do (at least not until grad school).
Old 05-04-2010 at 06:11 PM   #10
eullwm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by _Mike View Post
I really wanted to do that, but Sensory Processes isn't offered until Term 2 and I was contemplating doing Psych 2RA3 (and probably 2RB3), but because I'm not registered in a level II program like psych or cognitive science of language, I'm not permitted to take the course(s). :(
Talk to your department's academic advisor, or somebody within the office. Somebody should be able to help you and point you to who you need to talk to in order to get clearance to take the course.
Old 05-04-2010 at 07:14 PM   #11
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Quote:
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Talk to your department's academic advisor, or somebody within the office. Somebody should be able to help you and point you to who you need to talk to in order to get clearance to take the course.
I e-mailed Ann Hollingsworth and she said that because decisions regarding admission to level II programs won't happen until near the end of the month, that I couldn't register and that the pre-requisite (admission to a level II psych program) wouldn't be waived for me.

Thank you guys for all your great advice! Since math isn't my strong suit, I think I'll shy away from linear algebra unless I can't find any other electives to take.



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