[ High School and Self-Education Board ]
Posted by LoriM on 21:26 May 10
In Reply to: Question about college curricula posted by Gwen in VA
My older dd and I spent the last couple of days plotting out her CC experience so that she achieves her goals of graduating from high school with an associate degree, AND also finds that the choices she made will transfer to a state university and fulfill the General Education requirements for pretty much any major on her radar at this point.
But since she plans to take the Calculus sequence, we looked into the difference between an AA and an AS. Wow. What a huge difference! An AA has about what you've mentioned--a seemingly random smattering of courses from every sort of discipline. I'm not opposed to that--AT ALL--after all, that's the idea of a good liberal arts education. She *wants* to know a lot about a lot of different things. But it's almost excessive, like a smorgasboard where she'd take a bite from each course, but never get enough to actually entice her to take some more on the next pass.
At least the AS requires a bit more *achievement* in a few areas. Her sampling is still there, but she'd go deeper in sciences and in maths and yes, even in history OR political science OR psychology, but not the 111 course of every department. LOL.
Anyway, now she's leaning toward the AS. Of course, we found out she took the "wrong" Chemistry this semester--perfectly fine for an AA, not "sciency" enough for an AS. Oh, well, she hated it anyway (LOL) and planned to move on to Physics next year. (c:
Oh, back to your specific "major" coursework point...see, I remembered! LOL. We seriously studied Art Animation as a major option (a BFA) for her continuing education, and it's similar to engineering or math, in that the courses are well-developed and systematic in progression. Since her other three majors in consideration are Math, Computer Science and English, we examined those requirements pretty closely too. Math and Comp Sci are a clear progression of difficulty as well as a broad scope of interests that can be targeted further along. English, OTOH, seemed to be very non-sequential after the basic Freshman prerequisites were met.
Keep in mind that she's pretty much settled on going to our local university (ECU) and living at home, so we are targeting one institution's structure for degree requirements.
Honestly, I was never quite as happy as I was when she looked at the course list for her favored major--Art Animation--and asked, "But where is the math? and computer courses?" LOL. My bias was definitely showing. And she was genuinely disappointed, because animation--in her mind--involves technical expertise and lots of programming skill. Her artistic skills are something she takes for granted, like breathing. I keep reminding her that a Fine Arts degree with be discipline for that part of her skills as well.
Heck, the way it's going she'll probably major in ALL of the above, and take 10 years to graduate. ROFL.
Lori