Preparing for SCS freshman

KrazyKow
Sun, 20 Apr 2008 12:39:37 +0000

I’m specifically not a robotics person, so I’m not really qualified to tell you anything, but people I know who like robotics seem happy with the robotics minor.
Sometimes you get assigned grunt work, sometimes not - it depends on what you know and how useful you can be, as well as who you’re working with. I’m sure it’s also highly dependent on what area your research is in - theory people probably don’t need so many simulators written. You shouldn’t expect to be able to find a paid job where you can do whatever you want; even grad students have trouble with that. Whatever it is that you’re doing, you will probably learn things that will be useful later on - if you choose to write your honors thesis, you’ll be encouraged to do your own thing.
No way to skip 15-123, unless you’re super-amazing. You may be able to skip 15-111 by talking with your advisor, but I know some people who have regretted their choice to skip - you miss out on some of the freshman bonding (most students take 15-111) and your chance to figure out how some of CMU works by skipping it. You probably wouldn’t be able to take 15-211, anyways, unless you have a discrete math background.
The lab component is a separate class that meets something like 6 hours a week. No one has ever claimed it to be a hard class, but my impression has always been that it’s very tedious.
Do you have any humanities interests? The answer to this question is highly dependent on what you like. I like my online Chinese classes, but rather disliked the 300-level Spanish culture class I took. Psychology classes I’ve taken range from really great to absolutely terrible (just one class, and the professor isn’t tenured and never should be). I know people who love literature classes, and people who hate every humanities class they take…