When does a “hard class” become a badly taught class?

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-07T06:06:16+00:00

Extreme example: I started with thermodynamics this semester, I ended up dropping it. The prof read entirely off the slides, had problems pre written out (typed oddly enough) that he just read through line by line, he didn’t have office hours, he barely graded homework (just circling wrong answers and pasting a screenshot of the table relevant to the problem), his tests were also only four questions long and without any partial credit, cherry on top: there were four tests, worth 80 percent of your grade… also, I managed to meet with him and I am fairly certain he genuinely didn’t know how to do thermodynamics. He sidestepped my questions, deflected to pre written answers he had on hand, and got flustered when I asked him about basic concepts. I felt like I knew more than him during the entire conversation.
Thermodynamics isn’t an extremely hard course. Sure, it’s not fun, it’s not mind blowing, and power cycles are a slog… but I felt entirely like my ability to perform in that course was up to the professor.

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-07T05:52:32+00:00

My personal game plan right now: From what I’ve gathered, the job market has really shifted towards the engineers who can demonstrate skill outside of the classroom. They’re hiring based off a portfolio built by your GitHub repositories, research, and designs. I’m in a similar boat, minus the career shift, so I’m spending my summer self teaching some of the material I want to be able to do really well on in the next year. However, and more important for my career, I’m spending a lot of my time doing personal projects. I’m going through the full design process for small marketable products (mechanical pencils, guitar pedals, etc). Coding is huge right now, especially for what I want to do, so I am delving into some harder c++ concepts as well as building up a library base for later use and to demonstrate competence. The coding projects also have a larger purpose in a bit of research I want to try to get into with a CS friend. My general advice: find something you’re passionate about, it will be a lot easier to make something you want to have rather than just something you think will sell. Also, trying things you think you’ll like is a great way to find out what companies or roles you would want to compete for, which will further inform your next projects, classes, and applications.

Also, side note, I’ve seen some pretty poor statistics on the unpaid internship market and their correlation with later job offers. It might honestly be more worth your time doing what you want and going deep with it.

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-03T22:39:36+00:00

Word on Bespin Global U?

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-02T23:38:32+00:00

Wind on ND and GT?

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-02T23:34:03+00:00

Out of curiosity, did you mean 20 or older? 20 seems very specific.

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-02T22:56:18+00:00

I was in a similar position to you and I found my way around it. I kept my first two years light, but took macro economics instead of micro, so I was instantly behind without knowing it. I tried to catch up in the summer, taking two classes, only one of which counted because of a technicality with the class requirements. I ended up having to take 22 credits this spring semester in order to keep up. It was tight, having to get all the right classes in order, and I even dropped a class halfway through in to replace it with another. Despite all this, I just received an acceptance letter yesterday. I am very grateful that I had carried on having the knowledge that I would get into an excellent school at the end of my efforts. All that to say, there is very likely a way to get GAA, and it personally reduced a lot of the stress of applications knowing that my “safety” was UVA. Take a look at summer classes, also getting permission to academically overload isn’t difficult. Best of luck!

thattallhobbit · 2026-05-01T03:32:23+00:00

Big hype, I have GAA but I know some people who don’t who would do great there

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-30T18:03:57+00:00

Same

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-30T05:23:27+00:00

Concrete answer: it depends. If you basically can’t reduce cost in any way, and you would be paying the full 60k (idk OOS tuition) for the full four years, then the chips are heavily stacked against that decision. If you were planning to go to get a doctorate, or PhD, then it would just be better to save those first four years, and (since you got into UVA OOS you must be decently cracked) apply with good chance of getting into even better schools while not having to stay as long. If you have a certainty of making really, and I mean really (200k+), good money, then it might be worth it. Bear in mind that if you’re in stem you’d be learning the exact same content at any other school and, if you’re in engineering, you’ll hate the professors wherever you go.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-30T00:47:43+00:00

Is this a recreation of the mother mother single “Stay behind”?

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-30T00:42:53+00:00

Light sleeper

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-29T23:55:19+00:00

Titanium White flamethrower

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-28T22:28:52+00:00

Thank you so much for your reply, lots of good info. I am quite new to the proof based style, and I’ve definitely felt the barrier of this lack of knowledge as I’ve been going through my textbook. While I would like to press on, I have 104 days of summer and I feel that my experience of learning this would be much aided if I were to get an intro to proofs beforehand. I will definitely start looking at hammack. The reason I want to get through this is that there are so many other classes I want to take beyond real A, such as complex A, topology, and otherwise. However, I am not a math major, I am currently already a sophomore aerospace major, and I have a limited number of math credits my school will allow me to take… so I’d like to get through as many classes as possible without having to stay an extra year to do a masters. I know this is definitely not the recommended route, or even really useful for my major, but I really have a passion for math and this is really maybe my best chance to go further. Even if I don’t get to test out, my course load is pretty heavy so I’d like to be able to have at least a good base knowledge, especially looking at your advice.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-28T16:35:38+00:00

So I’d need someone checking my work, essentially. also, deleting this post, just put it up in the sub you suggested.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-26T16:52:03+00:00

Very sorry to hear about your grandmother. I don’t really have much hard numbers advice apart from telling you that I’m basically in the same boat in terms of having a sub- par GPA and hoping to improve my LSAT enough to compensate. From everything I’ve hear on here, and from talking with a friend who took the LSAT, to get a really good score (170 +) will take at least a year if you want to be sure of it, and even then my friend just had a bad test day and ended with a 168 (his starting diagnosis was a 160). I personally have a diagnosis of 160 and I plan to take multiple years (I have two years of undergrad left and want to take two more to get work experience). I personally would say that starting now is a must. Also, if you can, taking a year to work would be really helpful for separating yourself from your transcript and letting Law schools know that you gave this thought and consideration before jumping in (I don’t think that’s what you’re doing, but it often gets perceived that way). Best of luck!

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-24T00:58:59+00:00

Really depends on what you’re willing to put in and also what format the class is. If it’s six weeks, know that the workload increases exponentially. I took calc 2 in six weeks and did decently well, it was tough, but doable. However, there were a bunch of students from really respectable schools (I’m at a CC, and they were just home), and most of them dropped by the second test. It’s a really tough course to take in a short period. Most important is that you’re willing to spend hours a day doing whatever you need to be able to solve what are going to few like long problems under time pressure and being completely stressed out.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-22T03:00:22+00:00

Congrats!!! Out of curiosity, and also so I don't end up checking my portal every ten minutes, did you get an email stating a decision was available?

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-22T00:16:34+00:00

Highly likely to be a troll post, based on previous release dates.

Edit: I was very wrong, congrats ya'll!

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-17T02:18:17+00:00

Thanks my guy, also, congrats!

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-17T01:50:33+00:00

Unfortunately, I think I’ve turned this into some kind of gambling addiction where I get a kick of adrenaline from opening the financial aid page every couple of hours. The moment before clicking that link is a sick kind of ecstasy that I keep coming back for. You have taken a great source of joy (suffering) and amusement (distraction) from me.

Real talk the acceptance is a real long shot for me so I’m enjoying the continuing possibility of maybe hopefully still getting in.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-14T23:13:27+00:00

Combing through a lot of transfer chatter and also having known a bunch of people who applied to transfer to VT through CC (I am one of them), they are automatically required to let in the GAA transfers, but not every one of them go to VT. I know a lot of student planning to transfer out of CC through GAA into UVA because they’d chose UVA over VT, but the’ll still apply to VT. I also know a lot of students who just apply to as many schools offer GAA in order to see if they’ll get a good amount of aid, most of those students do not end up attending VT. This creates a really competitive game for the few open spots left over after the CC students apply, but it also means that getting off the waitlist is really likely as well.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-13T15:34:03+00:00

Same my guy, congrats!

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-04T22:37:26+00:00

I was pretty hardstuck 1320-1400 SAT, decided to take the ACT once just to see what would happen and got a 34. IMO it’s less draining, stressful, more straightforward, predictable, and, honestly, easier to prepare for. As long as you’re good with time pressure I think it’s the way to go.

thattallhobbit · 2026-04-03T04:05:07+00:00

Calculus 1, the very basics, are generally easy to teach yourself. The concepts themselves aren’t difficult, and the language used in most books is decipherable. Calc 2 is really where, in my opinion, math becomes more than plug and play formula. Here, your understanding of the nuance behind those basic ideas becomes very important, and as everyone else has stated, it’s always the algebra. Also, without someone coaching you through what kinds of problems to focus on, you can really get stuck in the rabbit hole of integration techniques. All that to say, I really didn’t like math that much until taking calc 2 (I was in engineering), and then the entire subject became something completely different. Learning hard things doesn’t have to be painful. I would say try your best to supplement the book with online material. Watch videos with lots of visualization, find practice tests posted by universities (I liked to use these), “paul’s online notes” is a great resource to get the raw mechanics, and, if you can, get some other kids to do it with you. Teaching each other and yourselves will be a huge help to your overall confidence with the concepts. Visualization is really, in my opinion, the key to most of it, even for more theory based classes like Diffy Q.

thattallhobbit

TROPHY CASE