Hey everyone.

First off, I'd like to say that I'm pumped to start at McMaster this Sept! I can't wait!

Anyways, I need some advice on balancing my timetable for Engineering I.

Here's what I've got so far:


As I've been advised, I've got my Econ electives in separate terms, and 1D04 & 1C03 in separate terms as well.


How do these look in terms of balancing for course load/work?
What I mean is, some classes will obviously be more demanding then others, so how does my schedule look with that in mind?

Also, any suggestions for electives that have less work involved then the two Econ classes I've selected would be welcome. From what I've heard, Eng I is pretty heavy, so I want to reduce my workload as much as possible by going with the easiest electives.

Thanks in advanced for your time!
-Panici

All you can really do is choose 1D04/1C03 in seperate terms, which you have done, and the rest are already set up for you. So in terms of balancing courses by terms its already done for you I guess. As for those electives I took Geo and History instead which had ALOT of essays, reading and group projects which really ate up my study time with hard courses like 1Z04/1ZZ5 so I wouldn't advise to go into those but I've heard ECON is fairly easy and its also required to get into Eng & Management in upper years if you do decide to go into that stream.

Yeah.. all you can really do is have 1d04 and 1c03 in 1st/2nd term and econ in each term.

Based on my experience last year, majority of engineers had 1bb3 1st term, so i suggest taking it then. As for 1d04 or 1c03.. depends. If youve done programming, take 1c03 first term, that way your 2nd term will be easier (1d04 is ALOT of review from highschool programming, only a few new concepts)

Well from what I've heard from my friend, in econ they spent an entire class teaching students how to take the slope of a line. It's good that you're spacing them out over both terms and it's a good choice in electives.

As blackdragon said, the only thing you should try to do is get 1C03 in first semester and 1D04 in the second. Both 1P03 and 1C03 have a big project in the end, and if you have 1C03 in your second term, then you're going to be dealing with two projects simultaneously, which A LOT of engineers struggled with last year.

Good luck with your first year, and as a heads up, make sure you do all the suggested problems for 1Z04 when school starts

Thanks everyone for the help!

I've got 1C03 in first and 1D04 in second already, so hopefully I should be good to go.

I'll make sure to do those 1Z04 problems

Any other tips you guys have would be welcome!

Originally Posted by panici

Any other tips you guys have would be welcome!

Well, the only two other things I can think of are:

Make sure you avoid professor Botton's class for materials. I'm pretty sure all of engineering can unanimously say that he sucks at teaching first year.

For physics, make sure you do the CAPA problems (you'll figure out what these are when you get there). They're pretty much the key to doing well in 1D03 and 1E03.

Originally Posted by Ownaginatios

For physics, make sure you do the CAPA problems (you'll figure out what these are when you get there). They're pretty much the key to doing well in 1D03 and 1E03.

You can also work with classmates on CAPA.

Originally Posted by blackdragon

Yeah.. all you can really do is have 1d04 and 1c03 in 1st/2nd term and econ in each term.

Based on my experience last year, majority of engineers had 1bb3 1st term, so i suggest taking it then. As for 1d04 or 1c03.. depends. If youve done programming, take 1c03 first term, that way your 2nd term will be easier (1d04 is ALOT of review from highschool programming, only a few new concepts)

So if i have not done programming in high school you really think i should take 1do4 in first term? What does every body else think?
I was also thinking of taking only one elective this term (1bb3) and then take an elective in the summer. You think that is a good choice?

Originally Posted by aziz917

So if i have not done programming in high school you really think i should take 1do4 in first term? What does every body else think?
I was also thinking of taking only one elective this term (1bb3) and then take an elective in the summer. You think that is a good choice?

If I were you, I would still take 1D04 in the second term. As mentioned above, 1C03 and 1P03 both have a massive project at the end, and if you do 1C03 in second term, you'll be doing both of these projects at the same time.

As to 1D04, I can't really tell you if it's easy or not for you because the professor apparently keeps changing. The guy that taught the year before us (2007-08 year) was apparently really hard. The guy we had was pretty easy, but he's not teaching 1D04 next year. People who had never done programming before either did really well in this class, or did terribly. It really depends on how you think I suppose.

As to taking an elective in the summer, if you think you need more time during the year for studying and stuff, go for it. I know of a few people that took both electives in the summer for their first year.

Got my schedual here, but it looks like I have some conflicts and I have no idea how to fix them when SOLAR opens tomorrow.



HELP!

When solar opens tomorrow, you'll actually be able to change the actual core, lab or tutorial you want to be in. Depending on which section you choose (ie. L01, T04 etc...) the classes, tutorials or labs start and end at different times.

Being a former first year engineering student last year with no programming experience, you should do 1c03 first term and 1d04 second term. 1d04 is very easy to understand as long as you remotely try.

I personally took 1b03 micro first term so when it came time to second term 1bb3 macro, you could skip the first maybe 2 or 3 weeks of class since it's a review of micro. I personally found macro harder than micro.

Looking at your schedule, it doesn't look that great since your classes are all over the place, I would try and spend some time and make your own preferred timetable by using the master timetable on the mcmaster site. From there you can find all the different sections for each course and try to group courses together.

I found that having the 1 hour breaks aren't as good since if you're like me and decide to walk back to rez, by the time you get back, you'll only have about 30 minutes of free time and then you'll have to walk back to class.

Sorry for the really long post.

Thanks for taking the time to type all that, it really does help!
How can I tell what is conflicting? I know chem and econ have conflicts from the dialog at the top, but how can i tell what they are conflicting with?


EDIT2- What does E O W mean?


EDIT3- Chemistry has always been really tough for me, what prof should I try and get to make my time a little easier? I heard Dumont was great, but he isn't teaching first year chem this year. :(


EDIT:
Here is my 2nd semester just FYI

Morning bump

EOW stands for Every Other Week

To tell conflicts, go to the master timetable and check what time each section is at, and see what other course you have in that time slot.