I have the choice of MATH 139 (4 1 hour classes, 4 credits; Calc 1 + pre-calc) or MATH 140 (3 1 hour classes, 3 credits; Calc 1). I'm Canadian by the way, and am only applying to Canadian schools. I can't attend both to see which I like due to significant scheduling conflicts.
Pro/con list:
MATH 139
Pros:
Cons:
MATH 140
Pros:
Cons:
To summarize, I'm just concerned with getting an A in this course, so which do you think will give me the best chance? Currently leaning towards MATH 139, since I think having the best prof will outweigh the cons. Also, I'm sorry, this ended up being much longer than I intended. Thank you in advance for any responses!
Pro/con list:
MATH 139
Pros:
- One extra credit will give me 15 credits first semester; this is largely insignificant for my situation except that without this credit, my first year will not be used towards my GPA (even though it'll likely be my best year) at one (and only one) of the schools I'm applying to.
- Excellent professor teaching who also writes fair and easy (relatively) exams, quizzes, & assignments.
- 5 minutes faster to get to the building.
- More review on pre-calc which can't hurt (I found that stuff harder than calc).
Cons:
- An extra hour each week, and due to bad scheduling, the fourth hour is at 5:25 monday, 3 hours after the first hour lecture of the same class.
- I lose a pretty awesome (as in well scheduled) MATH 140 tutorial section, and will have to take a more out of place MATH 139 tutorial.
- Has 1/5 of the students of MATH 140 (200, 1 section vs 1000, 3 sections), meaning it's much harder to find people to study with since we'll be at different points in the material and will have different assignments (so no working together on those).
MATH 140
Pros:
- Lecturer is nice, recent MIT PhD grad, seems to be a decent teacher, but he's young and I think this is the first class he has to teach (him and the TAs will be grading everything I believe).
- Relevant cons of MATH 139.
Cons:
- The professor who writes quizzes, assignments & the final exam is known to be a very mediocre teacher who writes brutal quizzes and exams (though I believe he curves up; 15% failure rate, under 75% of students get a C or above).
- Likely filled with med school hopefuls, whereas MATH 139 will likely have more people who just need to take calc.
- Relevant pros of MATH 139.
To summarize, I'm just concerned with getting an A in this course, so which do you think will give me the best chance? Currently leaning towards MATH 139, since I think having the best prof will outweigh the cons. Also, I'm sorry, this ended up being much longer than I intended. Thank you in advance for any responses!
Last edited:
