A bit of a complicated question about math placement

lenmonster
Sat, 17 May 2014 19:05:44 +0000

Here is the situation. My son is a transfer student coming in from a MD community college. He has about 60 credits now and almost all his gen eds, as well as freshman English, etc.

He is going into a major that requires calculus placement as a co-requisite with his first major class.

He has just completed pre-Calc at the community college and due to several circumstances, he ended up getting a D (some of those circumstances actually were that he was lazy in the middle of the semester and spent way too much time with his (now ex) girlfriend).

I’m trying to wade through the morass of details.

First, it sounds like he must place into Calc via the placement test. He had gotten into UMBC, and did really well on the placement test there, and placed into Calc easily.

I was hoping he’d get at least a C in pre-Calc, assuming if he didn’t place into Calc via the test, he’d have satisfied the pre-req, but I’m not sure if he needs a C or if a D would have sufficed.

Now I’m sure the main question you’d be asking is that if he got a D in pre-Calc, is he really ready for Calc (since he’ll need a C in that within two attempts). He feels he is. He is not sure whether the D is actually a mistake, as he got a 96 on the mid-term before the final, and he felt very confident about the final, but can’t check the grades that went into the final grade, as the system locks him out. My suspicion is it’s either a mistake, he did marginally on the final, and he probably simply skipped a lot of homework which brought his grade down.

Bottom line, what are his options if he doesn’t place into Calc? I know he can take the test a second time. How quickly can he know his score? At UMBC, it was scored immediately. Will the D in pre-Calc satisfy the pre-req? If he took it at UMD, I think he’d need a C to move on.

He really has very little to take if he doesn’t start his major sequence, as he literally only has about three gen eds left, and most of the good ones are already full, so it would be very difficult to even cobble together a full time course load.

Hope that makes sense. Any help would be appreciated.