<p>In general, I’d say it’s a good idea not to slack frosh year and to take 5 real classes (i.e., not including PE, music, frontier/seminar) each term. If handling 5 frosh classes proves to be too difficult, then you can drop an elective (presumably a humanities/social science), but you would also have to consider if you’ve come to the right place. Frosh year is almost invariably the easiest year at Tech, so doing more than 43 units per term frosh year may make your life easier at some later point than if you loaded up on pizza classes early on.</p>
<p>I know some people who looked at their transcripts after several terms and said something to the effect of “wow, why did I take [such and such pizza course]? Maybe I could have taken something more useful.” It’s not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with filling up a few more units with those courses, especially if your option doesn’t have many requirements. If your option does, however, then you might have to be careful. I am personally trying to do an Aeronautics major and a Control and Dynamical Systems minor. Aeronautics alone has an unusually high number of requirements, and the CDS minor further limits my flexibility. I took 1 extra unit first term by doing E2, but I don’t think I would have wanted to do any seminar course that actually required work.</p>
<p>Most people I know, outside of the Math, Physics, Chem, and Hum which was… 33 units, took Intro CS or the Chem 3 lab or Ec 11 in addition to it and Math majors had their Math 5. Though I’ve heard Ec 11 is better with McAfee than with Plott, and I know 2nd term there’s are afternoon Chem 3 sections instead of 8-10am and then 1-4pm on the same day lab sessions (a killer really, but once you’re over with Chem 3 you’re over with it).</p>
<p>Yeah, sneaking into pizza classes is fine.</p>
<p>On the tangent of free food, if you’re the ombudsperson for your class usually you get Ath food once a term, but if you’re signed up for CS 1 you get Ath food once a week! So if you’re in CS 1 try and get that ombuds position because that means free really good food (my roommate would tell me about his ribeye steak for lunch and such) once a week.</p>
<p>For me personally, the years from easiest to hardest were Senior, Freshman, Sophomore, Junior. I took 95 junior year and that was also the year that I decided I wanted to add a second major, so it was pretty intense.</p>
<p>However, despite being the second “easiest,” frosh year was by far the biggest shock. I pretty much knew what to expect from then on. I was from a pretty rural high school, hadn’t taken any math beyond basic Calc and never any calc-based physics and I could’ve REALLY used something like FSI… at least more than the various invited kids who were, like, the children of two college professors could’ve. But of course I’m a plain old European-American male, so no luck there.</p>
<p>APh9 is pretty entertaining but don’t expect everything to work exactly right!</p>
<p>so how does taking my chem math physics, then US History as my humanities and APh/EE as an elective, then the 1 unit frontiers in engineering sound? that’s 46 units i think…</p>
<p>^ It’s 40 units actually (APh and Ch are each 6). There’s certainly nothing wrong with that schedule. It is on the lighter side (40 units, 6 of which are APh 9a, which is the easiest class at tech), but there’s no shame in that at all - especially if you haven’t ‘covered’ the material in core. </p>
<p>Also for those who care, if you’re not comfortable with proof-based math, Ma 8 (3-0-0) can be really helpful for getting you through Ma1a. I’m guessing most people actually save time by attending rather than doing the problems on their own (or with other suffering students).</p>
<p>I don’t know US history specifically, but most of the frosh hums are relatively laid-back. With the possible exception of the week essays are due. But my schedule frosh year was:</p>
<p>First term: Chem, Phys, Math, Hum 9 (knowledge and reality), Aph9, guitar, silkscreening, and fencing. For a total of 48 units. And certaily doable. APh9 is not very work-intensive, and Axel Scherer is a fun lecturer. Guitar was 3 units a week, and silkscreening was maybe 2-3 hours if i had something to do that week, otherwise 1.</p>
<p>Second Term: Chem, Phys, Math, Hum 4 (Mesopotamian history something or other), fencing, Chem 3A, and CS 11 python track. How doable depends on you; the CS 11 tracks tend to get a lot harder towards the end (I ended up needing an E in it, but I passed it a week before the deadline 3rd term) Total of 48 units.</p>
<p>I would personally suggest taking at least chem 3, and either your “other lab” or CS 1 during pass/fail. It makes life a lot happier to have it done, and not have to worry about it when the rest of your classes are on grades.
Pass/fail, frosh!</p>
<p>If you can handle Tech work fine, which is the case for many, then adding a humanities/social science option shouldn’t be too difficult. I’ve never looked at the actual requirements, but I’ve heard that some people were able to add an HSS option just by carefully picking HSS classes they would have had to take anyway for the core requirement, and adding a few more courses on top of that.</p>
<p>If you want to double major, try to be very familiar with the requirements of both options as early as you can so you can plan out a general 4 year schedule and see if the workload and the decrease in schedule flexibility are acceptable to you. </p>
<p>Another thing to note is that you can also plan your schedule a little differently to make things easier. If I were a frosh wanting to double major in one of the humanities, I might take two frosh hums fall term to enable me to take upper level humanities courses in the winter and spring terms.</p>