Preparing for SCS freshman

VectorLaplacian
Sat, 19 Apr 2008 22:06:54 +0000

Hi KrazyKow,

I’ll be an SCS freshman this fall, and I have some questions, if you’d care to answer them:

1. Do you have any experience with the minor in robotics and/or scientific computation? I’m pretty interested in both and was wondering about their rigor and how, for example, the robotics minor compares to the graduate-level stuff done at cmu.


I’ve written a smoke simulator based on Jos Stam’s Stable Fluids paper (www.dgp.toronto.edu/people/stam/reality/Research/pdf/ns.pdf). Because of this, I’m reasonably confident that I’m ready to jump into some sort of interesting research. While I’ve heard that it’s obscenely easy to get into a research group as a CS undergrad, how often does an undergrad get assigned grunt work or crap like that?
Is there a placement test for 15-123? People have told me that it’s a pretty boring class, and was wondering if there’s some sort of placement test for it. On the subject of placement tests, is there some way to skip 15-111 with <5 on the cs ab test?
I’ve looked at physics 1 and 2 for science majors, but none of those have a lab component, which is required for the CS major. Is there some accompanying lab component for those lecture classes, because I’m very interested in the subject and would like to have those count towards my reqs somehow.
Last one: Which are the least painful humanities courses? Is the pain level in these teacher-dependent?


Thanks,
VL