Pre-reqs are a simple way to ensure everyone in the course is starting at about the same place. Its very hard to teach a course if some students are lacking the foundational material you're building on.
But if you make a capable student take the pre-req as a box-ticking exercise, then they often enter that class (edit: the pre-req class) way ahead of everyone else.
That's what your advisor is for. And if your advisor doesn't help, speak with other faculty members. You're responsible for your own education in college, you're an adult (normally, and if you're that precocious that you're a child in college your progress will be very different from the norm anyways). In the ideal world you get a good advisor (like I did, skipped several 2xxx level math and CS courses as a consequence; still took the same number of courses to graduate). But you could also have a shitty advisor (like I did at first) so you have to shop around and find someone who will help you. Form relationships with faculty members in the department, demonstrate your competence so they can advocate for you to your advisor as well.
As a non-major, I did not have access to an advisor in the department. My general advisor was for the liberal arts college (which I belonged to), and he did not have any sway in the engineering college.
I ended up getting to know one faculty member and having them back me up when I needed it, but it was still a bureaucratic mess every time. Meanwhile in my own major’s department, anyone could basically sign up for any class freely, as long as they agreed to accept the consequences of not being prepared enough.
I was pushing back at the parent comment suggesting pre-reqs are some big conspiracy.
If a university blocks someone who is capable, but lacking pre-reqs, from taking a course there is no real cost to them, and little to the student. (At least for me there were more courses I was interested in taking than I had time to take.)
If a university lets someone take a course without pre-reqs, and that person lacks the required foundation and does badly in the course, it's bad for the student (time wasted) and bad for the university (disruptive to the course, bad in University ranking exercises).
Pre-reqs are not perfect, but it's also hard to assess what all potential students are capable of before before taking a course in the same way that job hiring is difficult. So they are a reasonable approach.
Comments
Pre-reqs are a simple way to ensure everyone in the course is starting at about the same place. Its very hard to teach a course if some students are lacking the foundational material you're building on.
But if you make a capable student take the pre-req as a box-ticking exercise, then they often enter that class (edit: the pre-req class) way ahead of everyone else.
That's what your advisor is for. And if your advisor doesn't help, speak with other faculty members. You're responsible for your own education in college, you're an adult (normally, and if you're that precocious that you're a child in college your progress will be very different from the norm anyways). In the ideal world you get a good advisor (like I did, skipped several 2xxx level math and CS courses as a consequence; still took the same number of courses to graduate). But you could also have a shitty advisor (like I did at first) so you have to shop around and find someone who will help you. Form relationships with faculty members in the department, demonstrate your competence so they can advocate for you to your advisor as well.
As a non-major, I did not have access to an advisor in the department. My general advisor was for the liberal arts college (which I belonged to), and he did not have any sway in the engineering college.
I ended up getting to know one faculty member and having them back me up when I needed it, but it was still a bureaucratic mess every time. Meanwhile in my own major’s department, anyone could basically sign up for any class freely, as long as they agreed to accept the consequences of not being prepared enough.
I was pushing back at the parent comment suggesting pre-reqs are some big conspiracy.
If a university blocks someone who is capable, but lacking pre-reqs, from taking a course there is no real cost to them, and little to the student. (At least for me there were more courses I was interested in taking than I had time to take.)
If a university lets someone take a course without pre-reqs, and that person lacks the required foundation and does badly in the course, it's bad for the student (time wasted) and bad for the university (disruptive to the course, bad in University ranking exercises).
Pre-reqs are not perfect, but it's also hard to assess what all potential students are capable of before before taking a course in the same way that job hiring is difficult. So they are a reasonable approach.
Why?
If retaking a prereq is a huge boost for you, you didn't learn it well the first time.
My last comment was a little ambiguous, sorry. I meant that you’ll often enter the pre-req well ahead of the others.
In many of my early college classes, there were people who already knew most or all of the material and were just there because they had to be.