Transition from High school to University

Hello /sci/

I am about to transition from high school to university and would like some reading that would help me prepare for a first year engineering or general sciences course.

Preferably chemistry or physics since I am missing a few courses in those subjects but they will let me squeak by because of my marks.

Any suggestions welcome, just not SICP.
(If you were going to suggest that get back to /prog/)

first year engineering courses are pretty easy, generally.
you'll probably take university calc 1 and 2.
and physics for sci and eng 1 and general chemistry 1, a lab with each.
then an intro to eng class, possibly followed by another specific to your major.
some required writing course.
also you'll take an introductory programming course.
perhaps some elective like microecon on top of that.

Any specific book titles?

the simplest answer is just find out what textbooks they have used in the past for classes you will probably be taking, buy used copies and and go over the material beforehand durin the summer.
perhaps you might even consider e-mailing someone from the math department, maybe a secretary, maybe the head, maybe a professor, to see if they could offer you a copy of some past syllabus for the course you might be taking. Then just hope they give enough of a shit to help you out during the summer before you are a freshman.
of course, this all applies only if you're willing to spend the dough on extra used textbooks, and you are fairly sure what maths you will be taking.

Instead of starting a new thread, I'll just ask here.

I just got out of my AP Calculus exam (AB, my school doesn't offer BC unfortunately) and it was possibly the single worst test I have EVER taken. Is there anything like that in college? Do math majors have the equivalent of an MCAT?

>>3
READ SICP

>>6
SICP sucked

>>5
Putnam?
GRE math subject test?

>>4
Thanks, I will see if I can even borrow some.

>>6
...

Chemical engineering fag here.

>>7
GRE math subject is basically SAT math all over again. Meaning, boring shit is boring. Took the test in November, easy as shit. I'm not familiar with Putnam, but that's essentially the US college equivalent of the HS Math Olympiad. Not required.

>>5
If you mean the AP Calc AB was the "worst test ever" in terms of being difficult, then expect to be screwed if you do engineering or math in college. AP exams are easy as hell (think about it: roughly a 65% will give you a score of 5).

If you mean "worst ever" in terms of being required by your goddamned school to buy a useless graphing calculator, then yeah, shitsux.

>>1
Zumdahl's Chemistry texts are some of the most popular ones out there (I'm not implying they're good). At least in the US. I'm judging from your use of "marks," that you're not from the US.

For math, it would help to know up through Calc BC (basic differentiation/integration). I've taken math courses up through partial differential equations, but for engineering, a basic knowledge of ODEs will suffice. I used Zill's text for this during hs: http://www.amazon.com/First-Course-Differential-Equations-Classic/dp/0534373887/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1241667086&sr=8-4

I could list some other chemistry and chemical engineering texts I've used if you're interested.

>>7
SICP sucked
Blasphemy! You take that back!

>>9
Fine, the Putnam's not required.  I'm not talking about the math half of the GRE general exam.  I'm referring to the math specific GRE subject test.

http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/GRE/pdf/gre_0809_math_practice_book.pdf
Now that I look at it, most of the questions are actually pretty easy/doable.  #40, however, requires at least some ring theory, which we did not cover.  #49 looks doable, but I'm too lazy to try.

>>10
NO U

>>11
Oh, whoops, sorry. It didn't register to me that a GRE subject test in math existed. I didn't have to take any subject tests to apply for grad school.

>>9
Wait, wait. I can't quite wrap my head around the fact that you took the AP exam, found it easy, and believed your graphing calculator to be useless.

>>11
So the GRE looks good when applying to graduate school? Jesus, I was hoping my days of standardized testing were over.

>>13
Yeah, the only time I needed the calculator was for the free response questions. I had the integration forms memorized a while back.

My TI-89 is essentially a useless lump, and the biggest tech-related waste of my money ever. MATLAB or Mathematica are far more powerful and more versatile if I ever wanted to do some computation. As a senior about to get an engineering bachelor's, I've used my TI-89 pretty much only for basic arithmetic.

If you didn't take any AP shit on HS but are willing to give up the time needed to do well in math/sciences, how much per day would one need to study each subject?

>>6
>>7
What is this "SICP" and why might I want to watch/do/read it?

>>11
Putnam's not "required", strictly speaking, but if you want to get into a really good math grad school, it's definitely strongly recommended.  If you're not doing math, though, it's just a waste of time.

>>13
I thought the GRE was always required for grad school. ??

>>14
I have a TI-92 (the old version of a TI-89, a few less features, but has a qwerty keyboard and is much easier to type with), and I use it all the time.  It's not nearly as powerful as mathematica, but as long as it's powerful enough for what I'm doing, I prefer using a small calculator that's easy to handle physically over dragging out my laptop or walking over to a PC and waiting forever for mathematica to load up.  Its programming language is powerful enough to make it do just about anything I want it to, but on the other hand, it's just not very fast, and it's easy to write programs that take forever to run.  That's where the computer comes in, though.

>>15
Depends how dumb you are.

>>11
That problem doesn't require any ring theory.  Replace the word "ring" with the word "set" everywhere and nothing changes.

>>16
Ask /g/ this.

>>18
Regarding SICP, that is.

>>11
Oh, and #49's a total gimme if you know the structure theorem for finite abelian groups.  If you don't, then it might be a pain in the ass if not nearly impossible, I'm not sure.

>Depends how dumb you are.
Got 4.0 GPA on both science and math classes three years straight (freshman was a bit less I believe) by only paying attention; never reviewed or anything. Got a 640 on the math SAT though.

>>21
>4.0 GPA on both science and math classes three years straight by only paying attention
>Got a 640 on the math SAT

Your high school fucking sucked, dude.

>>22
Yep, hence why I asked how much effort I should put on my studies.

>>11
Are there any more (free) practice tests for the GRE math subject test out there that anyone knows of?

>>15
Spend 1-2 hours per day. You seem like a decent student.

>>20
Yeah, it basically boils down to an integer partition problem, which is doable for small numbers, but not completely trivial.

>>26
>not completely trivial

Really?  It's a 2-group, so the cyclic factors have order a power of two.  Every element has order <= 4, so only 2 and 4 can occur.

4,4
4,2,2
2,2,2,2

Answer: (D) 3

>>23
I am in the same boat, man. Florida has the WORST schools, I don't care what we're ranked now. Florida in general is a terrible place.

>>18-19
Disregard that, don't ask /g/. /g/ are a bunch of faggots. Full text of SICP is here: http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book.html