The "6 year" graduation rate

ucbalumnus
Tue, 15 Sep 2015 00:24:46 +0000

Jamrock411:

Any course at or above College Algebra is not considered remedial. These are kids are entering their Junior Year of High School and many of them did not take a rigorous Precalculus Algebra And Trigonometry (MAC1140) before hand.

MAC1105, MAC1114, MAC1140, MAC1147 are not remedial at the high school level, but are remedial at the college level, since college frosh (particularly engineering majors) are expected to start in calculus 1 (MAC2311) or higher. This means that if they are part of the 60 credits that a frosh engineering major brings in, they do not really help the student graduate any earlier, since they do not have any use as subject credit for an engineering major.

For example, UF’s recommended plan for mechanical engineering majors at https://catalog.ufl.edu/ugrad/current/engineering/majors/mechanical-engineering.aspx#sp shows MAC2311 as the expected first semester math course. A student who starts in a lower math course will likely need extra semesters, and credit for lower math courses does not apply to any requirements for the degree.

Oddly, UF assumes that, instead of taking slight overloads of 16-17 credits per semester like many other engineering majors at other schools, the student will take at least one summer session (looks like the 9-credit “semester 5” in this plan), so that actual time to graduation is 8.5 semesters rather than 8 semesters for a non-advanced (but also non-remedial) student.