This is a bit of a strange post to do now, but I've been thinking about it a fair bit, and this is also a question that came up at the Post-Graduate Planning panel at Family Weekend. What classes should an Oliner take during the second semester of their first year to best prepare them for summer internships and later Olin classes?
There are just two requirements that semester, Products and Markets and Linearity I, which leaves most people with only eight credits already scheduled. For the next couple of years Olin will also be running Quantitative Engineering Analysis (QEA), which will cover the Linearity requirement and take up eight credits, so the students in that class would only need to take one more class to get to the standard sixteen credits.
Either way, that leaves at least one class to be filled, and for most majors it isn't convenient to start on major requirements in the spring. So here are some suggestions for what students should take.
Software Design. Regardless of major, this is a good choice. It's Olin's intro software class, but because of the number of people here with a lot of background it can get well past intro very quickly. There are some issues with large disparities in people's backgrounds. I wish Olin would move to a more Harvey Mudd-like model with this, offering different flavors, but freedom in projects allows a decent amount of differentiation within the class. This is a requirement for Electrical & Computer Engineering (ECE) and Engineering with a Concentration in Computing (E:C), and pretty much everyone who majors in Engineering with a Concentration in Robotics (RoboE) takes it as well. A lot of people at Olin stress the importance of having some comfort with programming, including Post-Graduate Planning, and the professors are popular. Along with the trend of more people coming in interested in doing software and robotics that I talked about here, this all makes SoftDes very popular and a good option for second semester of first year.
Introduction to Mechanical Prototyping. MechProto is very project based. Exactly what the projects are vary with who teaches it and what the professor is interested in that semester. While I've been here, teams have built fire-fighting robots, under-actuated hands, and recently the class has focused on kinetic and wind sculptures. In MechProto the teams do both the mechanical design and the fabrication, which is part of what separates it from Mechanical Design, which is just the design bit. This is a class that can get you really comfortable with CAD, doing drawings, and machining; it will give you a good sense for how to fabricate various types of things and help you figure out what can actually be built. I'm actually not sure what's covered in MechDes that isn't covered in MechProto, at least under the current professor for both, Dave. I think it will be interesting to see whether MechDes changes as more of its students become people who took MechProto with Dave as first years or sophomores. The population in MechProto shifted sometime while I was here. For a while it had more juniors in it, and now it's almost entirely first years with some sophomores.
A Physics Foundation. All Oliners need a physics foundation course to graduate. This is only necessary for students who don't take QEA; QEA covers that requirement. For students who want to do Electricity & Magnetism, wait until fall, but all other physics foundations (mechanics, quantum physics, sometimes others) are spring courses. This is the kind of requirement that you're really supposed to do early because it ties in well to the math classes and can help in later engineering science classes.
Biology, Chemistry, or Materials Science. There are two more basic science general requirements: Biology and Chem/MatSci. There are options for all of these in both semesters, but there are usually more biology offerings in the spring than in the fall, and often more chem/MatSci offerings as well. It's better to do these before senior year because it makes scheduling easier (especially for biology, which often has Wednesday labs), so lots of first years take one of them in the spring. It's more common to be able to get into Bio than MatSci. If neither works out as a first year, which can happen, that's fine; there are plenty of chances.
Arts, Humanities, Social Sciences, Entrepreneurship. Every Oliner has to take 7 AHSE courses to graduate. One of those is the AHS Foundation, taken first semester of first year, and another is Products and Markets, taken second semester of first year. Another three have to form a concentration. Taking an additional AHSE class in second semester on top of Products & Markets isn't very common, but it's possible, and if there's something really interesting at Wellesley (or Babson, but especially Wellesley because of how often some courses are offered) in a particular semester, I'd recommend trying to take it.
Computer Networks. This has object-oriented programming experience as a prereq, but a lot of Oliners come in knowing some Java or Python. This is an E:C elective (and I think counts as an ECE elective as well), and it's a small-ish class that covers some interesting things that aren't anywhere else in the curriculum.
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