Thanks @ucbalumnus and @xraymancs – it’s helpful to have your opinions. He and I talked about it a bit more.
Finding a schedule that works to merge HS classes with college MWF / TuTh schedules is difficult! It looks like he can take his 4 HS classes in the morning and college classes in the afternoon, but that limits the set of college classes that work since most classes have a lecture and a lab/discussion.
Since the physics for physics majors class won’t be offered at a time that works for him, and you both recommend against the physics for engineers sequence, he plans to take other courses that interest him.
We’ve heard of some colleges where getting into the honors or top-level physics sequence requires having taken the AP Physics C tests (not to pass out of it, just as prep). If he ends up committing to a college like that, he can prep a bit and take the AP tests next May.
It looks like he will try to take something like the following (though winter and spring are tentative, of course):
Fall: Linear Alg and math-based Astronomy (plus a 1 unit honors add on for current astro topics)
Winter: DiffEq and CompSci I (skipping intro class for students with no prior programming experience)
Spring: CompSci II and Astro II.
Backups he’s interested in if these don’t work with his schedule include:
– other CompSci classes with CompSci I as the prerequisite
– Geology electives (since he’s already taken the intro course)
– Statistics (with some calc)
As UCB suspected, the 1st real courses on EE and ME require 3 quarters of the physics for engineers sequence.
He will ask about course auditing also, because from the syllabus it looks like the upper-division Intro to Cryptography class would be fine for him, but his doesn’t have the prerequisites (but has significant experience in that aspect of hacking competitions).
I’m also hoping they will let him take a 1-unit Freshman Seminar class each quarter. These are 20-student, 10-hour total classes taught by professors on topics that interest them currently. They offer about 20 of these per quarter, and a number of them sound really interesting. It seems like a good way to compare large vs. small classes (his linear algebra class will be 300-500 students) and to have more direct interaction with a professor.