<p>Freshman advisors are usually mostly familiar with GIRs, so they usually won’t be able to properly advise someone looking to take more advanced classes outside of their department.</p>
<p>@sbjdorlo What your son should do probably depends on what courses he wants to take that have 18.100 as a prereq. If the class number looks like 18.1xx or 18.9xx, then it would be very useful to somehow self-study the material not covered in 18.100A. If the class number looks like 18.7xx, then they are probably just looking mathematical maturity, and your son would be fine taking the class, but might just need to work harder (or maybe not).</p>