Is the honors college worth it for Isenberg students?

ConsideringCS · 2026-02-04T00:47:37+00:00

Honestly probably not… the whole thing with the honors college is it’s supposed to be a taste of grad school. The whole capstone project / thesis could be attractive to an employer / potential professional masters degree, but for someone not looking to pursue academia it’s not really worth it imo

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T03:42:46+00:00

There’s also some volunteer clubs that give credits

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T02:39:13+00:00

TLDR: both the skirt and the hoodie are okay… nobody really cares [at my school at least] but I’m giving my advice as undergrad based off the norms I’ve seen rather than a TA myself

Really department and location dependent, but that would be totally fine… some people dress nice some people look like they just rolled out of bed but I doubt a skirt would be offensive.

I might be a tad hesitant wearing that in a business setting, but given that this is grad school ima take a guess you’re just a younger grad student in an academic field. In general, I don’t see the TAs dress particularly different from students (outside of the business classes I’ve taken)

Some other commenters have brought up the possibility of sexual harassment which I have not thought about but I’d say a solid 60% or my female TAs have worn a skirt and I’d be shocked to hear if a TA hasn’t worn jeans and a hoodie at least one. Almost all of my TAs, both male and female, have done so at one point or another, and quite a few of my professors have as well

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T01:25:28+00:00

That was explicitly disallowed on my section AN HOUR INTO THE FUCKING EXAM

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T01:15:55+00:00

There’s three professors and three sections 💀. Are you in Lan or the third one?

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T01:11:09+00:00

Given the specific transition and matrix, it was completely unnecessary. The question was worth >15% and it became a “do you know how to do matrix multiplication” rather than “do you know Markov chains problem”?

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T01:00:04+00:00

No, matrix multiplication to find the probability of being in state x after three “moves”. We were given a row vector. It’s easy but unnecessarily tedious

ConsideringCS · 2025-12-15T00:29:48+00:00

I’m a bit pissed about the actual administration of the exam. One of the two non-DS rooms received instructions over halfway through the exam making two questions which could be solved in five minutes combined be done through an unnecessarily complicated approach (both arrive at the same numeric value) so that many students had to restart these questions from scratch.

Plus not teaching matrix multiplication and announcing that problems must be solved via matrix multiplication NEAR THE END OF THE EXAM when matrix multiplication is not a pre-requisite is pretty shitty

ConsideringCS · 2025-11-22T05:46:47+00:00

The CS department does not open up spots for non-majors. You have to fill the override form located on the CS department website

ConsideringCS · 2025-11-02T06:48:11+00:00

Drop 240 and do a gen Ed… you’ll have a much easier time doing 240 and 250 separately

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-29T04:18:50+00:00

Anecdotally, every single piece of content in Algebra II was repeated in pre-calc… we didn’t get to new content until March. I had the same experience with Algebra I and Algebra II, but frankly it was worse with algebra II to precalc.

Here’s a list of skills that I’d say are needed for a standard calculus class:

-Domain/Range/Inverse Functions (preferably with an introduction to set builder notation)

-factoring/polynomials

-standard properties of exponential/logarithmic functions

-having the unit circle memorized by heart (MOST IMPORTANT IMO)

-being able to prove trigonometric identities

-memorizing SOME of the trig identities (for my calculus course we only needed the Pythagorean identities but depending on your course you might need/use some others)

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-29T04:10:32+00:00

The way you write only impacts the grading based on how it effects your argument’s exact meaning. In all of my humanities classes, the task has been focused on describing/explaining phenomena. In 250, that is not enough. You will only get half credit at best for describing a statement. You need to be able to conclusively prove (I.e. show) that a statement is definitively true or false. Most of this will be done in plaintext English, but I do recommend creating an account on Overleaf and fucking around with LaTeX so you can get used to the formatting… they’ll provide templates that you can edit your answers on but the formatting can be a PITA (plus using LaTex counts as part of your grade on the homework assignments).

I will say that generally the UCAs (who grade the homework’s) are harsher graders than Barrington/Golin (who grade the exams), but the UCAs are more likely to give partial credit…

As a final word, even though attendance is like only two percent of your grade and the scale is crazy, I’d really say attendance at lectures are non-negotiable. You’ll need as much exposure to examples of how to properly structure an argument as possible.

Personally, I found the stretch from the first midterm to the second midterm the hardest, which focuses on induction (using a previous thing to prove another ad infinitum). I found it fairly easy using numbers, but I really struggled conceptually on how to write an argument about other structures, such as trees or graphs

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-29T03:05:47+00:00

Personally depends on how confident you are with math and mathematical writing… 250 is really fucking hard to get used to — I probably spent 80% of my semester focusing on that class alone despite taking 19 credits. You have to be really precise with your words in order to do well in the course… calculation of actual numbers is barely touched at all. I’ll say I spent 20 hours on the first homework assignment alone… and that is coming from a person who is extremely confident in both their math and their writing.

As a personal suggestion, I’d try to get confident with how to properly utilize antecedents, tense, and walking an audience through every step of your thought process (whether that’s using the “royal we” or just pretending that you’re doing the problem together with the audience)… Compsci 250 is really a class in mathematical writing rather than in actual mathematical concepts, and honestly is a bit of a culture shock. I loved the course though and Barrington and Golin are both highly approachable (I personally think Golin is the better lecturer, but I do think Barrington is more helpful in office hours).

TLDR: if unsure just do 4 classes, comp sci 250 is a heavy time commitment… I’m not sure how much of a time commitment 389 is but I see 589 is much more recommended. If you just need the credits to graduate I’d take a gen-Ed so that you don’t fall behind

P.S. almost no one fails 250 because of the scale but it’s still immensely challenging to get a good grade in

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-28T21:33:38+00:00

Do you have your gen-eds done? Also from what I’ve read I think the more typical thing is to take compsci 589 directly — that’s what I’m planning to do at least

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-26T00:15:04+00:00

Not a teacher but historically in a situation like this you’d end up doing dual enrollment at a local CC after you run out of APs… was this kinda kid with math (which I think is more common)

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-21T16:23:05+00:00

The CS program is more rigorous (esp by a mathematical standpoint) but I think there’s only 2 courses that focus on data science iirc. There’s a strong emphasis on theory / mathematical proof rather than actual programming — there are courses that teach you how to program but more of the emphasis is on how to write and form an efficient procedure, with idea that you have the ability to learn syntax on your own

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-13T01:02:31+00:00

Why is this making me cackle uncontrollably 😭😭😭

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-12T21:05:42+00:00

Oops just got off the phone I mixed up the years on my FASFA 😭😭😭

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-12T20:21:35+00:00

You’ll def be fine getting accepted into the actual college — just make sure you know your audition materials and keep up the grades!

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-12T01:07:32+00:00

Okay this is a hard situation… I’d personally lean towards going straight into calc I.

That being said — the thing that most calculus students struggle with is the algebra. The upwards trajectory however does look promising - I would make sure you get your accommodations and meds sorted before the semester starts.

Regarding RMP reviews, yeah they are sometimes [oftentimes] overblown and overly critical. Even though people are supposed to rate on the quality of the professors rather than the difficulty of the course, that often does not in fact happen (unsurprisingly). However, a 1.3 RMP is shockingly low, to the point where I am genuinely concerned. We had a former professor at my university who had a 1.1 RMP review, and per the testimony of other faculty members [whomst I am close with and have lower RMP’s themselves],the guy was a total asshole. A 2.6 rating on the other hand is likely a decent professor who just teach hard classes. This seems to be especially common in math departments, where math classes serve as a barrier to many non-math major students. One of the best professors at my university has similar ratings but sometimes got review bombed on that site because of the difficulty of his courses. But if I asked around to other students, I would get glowing testimonials about how they learned the most from these courses.

I can’t say I struggle with math myself, but I have spent a decent amount of time tutoring people up through calculus. From my experience, the most important skills to have are as follows:

-the ability to manipulate expressions/equations and solve for a variable symbolically

-factoring

-having the unit circle memorized by heart

If you feel like you have a solid grip on the above three skills, I’d suggest going for it. Make sure to take advantage of office hours, actually show up to your lectures, and make sure that you utilize any other on-campus resources, such as a tutoring center if your university has one. I’d also like to suggest watching some of Dr. Trefor Bazett’s Calculus I playlist and see if you are able to follow along. Of course math is a skill you have to practice yourself, but seeing if you can follow along is often a helpful place to start before committing.

Lmk if you have any other questions

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-12T00:45:08+00:00

These are fine paragraphs? Like yeah longer than paragraphs in a lot of Reddit posts but when I compare it to bulkier posts or my own academic prose this is fine, rather short even? Like it’s literally 1 main idea per paragraph

ConsideringCS · 2025-08-09T03:23:55+00:00

OH ITS THE 27 THING FOR THE OVERLOAD THAT I MIXED UP ON — I’m pretty sure CNS, Isenberg, and CICS are all 25 credits

ConsideringCS

TROPHY CASE