<p>My son is a junior in high school with the dream of becoming either a BioMedical or Aerospace Engineer. He does great with science and the engineering classes he takes but struggles in math. We are trying to figure out what the best route for him would be to take. I have heard community college to start then switch to an University or I read that a small Liberal Arts College would get him started immediately with the engineering. Anyone have some experience or advice with this? Any suggestions on colleges?</p>
<p>I’d say community college is the best choice for someone who is unsure because the professors are more like teachers and the tuition is pretty cheap.
But he’ll simply have to learn the math. There is no way to succeed in engineering without a strong foundation of math. Though he may struggle, he will simply have to get through it or he’ll get nowhere.</p>
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<p>Aerospace engineering is EXTREMELY math intensive. That was actually one of the things that turned me off from studying aerospace engineering, even though I currently work in the aerospace industry. In the introductory class, every page of the assigned textbook had obscure equations that made no sense at that level. And don’t get me wrong, I’m definitely a math guy. It’s something that has always come easy to me which I’m grateful for.</p>
<p>But ultimately, if math is not a strong point, I would be careful about venturing into Aerospace Engineering because the phenomena they deal with are very complicated and require a high level of math to understand.</p>
<p>EDIT: Keep in mind, people in aerospace industry don’t need to be ridiculously good at math. It helps, but no one’s gonna be solving partial differential equations numerically by hand if you know what I mean.</p>
<p>Is there a top engineering school in the area? There are probably programs specifically set up for engineering transfers at one or more local CCs, if you look around the internets. That’s what I’m doing. </p>
<p>If you find a legit program, the education is good. I am thrilled with mine. Great professors, who are there to teach, and are really concerned about our preparedness to move forward. </p>
<p>What do you mean when you say he “struggles” in math? In my extremely limited experience, perceptions about natural math gifts are kind of damaging. I was never good at math, but I also have little pride or shame, so I was lucky enough to not have any fear of it. I imagine that most people who are good at math got it early and didn’t really have a heard time with it in HS, but I would assume that in large some of that is an effect of the fact that people who didn’t get it early learned to hate it early. </p>
<p>I am legitimately kind of stupid, and I “struggle” in math, but I also want to be good at it, so I am willing to struggle with it. My theory is that I will get better at getting it, but if it doesn’t get easier, it doesn’t. </p>
<p>If his dream is really to be an engineer, he will be willing to struggle with it (at least for a while), and if not, he probably learn doesn’t really want to be an engineer in the same way a lot of us do. Not a bad thing, just a thing. Bailing out of an engineering degree a couple semesters in is not a bad position to be in, as long as you are passing the math classes. </p>
<p>There is a sample bias on this board; most posters are in their late teens, either just starting or looking forward to starting college. If you are on a college board, you are probably interested in, and/or excited about, college and your major. Everyone in HS who posts here is doing everything he or she can do to position themselves perfectly – “What classes should I take sophomore year to be [specific subfield]?” It’s great, and people with that sort of forethought and ambition, not to mention education (coming into college with 2 semesters of calculus and linear algebra or whatever), are positioning themselves really well. But I also think it’s important to take a step back and recognize that at 18, no one is locked into anything. I mean, it took me about a month and a half to make up for never having actually even been to HS (teaching myself enough to score highly on an equivalence test). At your son’s age, I couldn’t really read for the most part, and the idea of math made me want to jump off a cliff, and now I getting sort of good at it and like it (best grade in my class, to my knowledge, in a class I wasn’t ready for). People change, and skills can be developed, and “good at/bad at math” is a label we apply to kids pretty early, and it doesn’t help anyone much. Some people just take a while to figure out what they like and what’s worth working on. </p>
<p>To wrap up that pointless wall of text, if your son wants to have a math-based major, he’ll figure out that it will require math, or he’ll figure out that he doesn’t really want to do much math. If he honestly wants to, I’m willing to bet that not a lot of people on this board have taken a level of math that can’t be gutted through by a student with no natural talent and a lot of will.</p>
<p>Or at least, that’s what I tell myself to stay focused.</p>
<p>Basically, if you’re worse at math, you’ll have to put in more work for a given result than someone who is better at it.
If you’re willing to do that, it really isn’t much of a problem.</p>
<p>Pffft…why would you phrase it like that, when it only would have taken you 10 minutes to stretch it into 11 whiney, self-satisfied paragraphs? Jeez.</p>