• Four Science Terps Awarded 2025 Goldwater Scholarships

    Four undergraduates in the University of Maryland’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences (CMNS) have been awarded 2025 scholarships by the Barry Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, which encourages students to pursue advanced study and research careers in the sciences, engineering and mathematics.  Over the last 16 years, UMD’s nominations Read More
  • Announcing the Winners of the Frontiers of Science Awards

    Congratulations to our colleagues who won the 2025 Frontiers of Science Award: - Dan Cristofaro-Gardiner, for his join paper with Humbler and Seyfaddini: “Proof of the simplicity conjecture”, Annals of Mathematics 2024. - Dima Dolgopyat & Adam Kanigowski, for their joint paper with Federico Rodriguez Hertz: “Exponential mixing implies Bernoulli”, Annals of Mathematics Read More
  • 2024 Putnam Results

    We are very excited to report that our MAryland Putnam team ranked 7th among 477 institutions that participated in the 2024 Putnam math competition. Our team members this year were Daniel Yuan, Isaac Mammel, and Clarence Lam. Daniel Yuan ranked 26th among 3,988 participants. Clarence Lam and Isaac Mammel were recognized for Read More
  • From Math Olympiads to Diplomacy: Meet Visiting Math Professor Qendrim Gashi

    Maryland Global, published a great interview with our visiting professor (and diplomat), Qendrim Gashi. The interview is available at https://marylandglobal.umd.edu/about/news/math-olympiads-diplomacy-meet-visiting-math-professor-qendrim-gashi Read More
  • Eugenia Brin, Longtime Supporter of Science and Performing Arts at UMD, Dies

    Eugenia Brin, a Russian immigrant and retired NASA scientist who, with her family of accomplished Terps, became an important benefactor of the University of Maryland, died on Dec. 3, 2024. She was 76 years old. The rest of the article can be read here: https://cmns.umd.edu/news-events/news/eugenia-brin-1948-2024 Read More
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You might, for example, be thinking of majoring in Business or Economics-BA, which require at least the Calculus course MATH 120, and perhaps MATH 121. (MATH 120-121 is a "terminal" sequence--you learn concepts of calculus, but you are not trained at a technical level, so these courses would not prepare you to follow up with a course such as Differential Equations (MATH 246), Linear Algebra (MATH 240 or 461) or a calculus-based probability and statistics (STAT 400).

For MATH 120, the math placement test becomes more ... interesting. A preprequisite course to MATH 120 is the course MATH 113 (College Algbebra with Applications), or a suitable score on the Math Placement Exam. The material of MATH 113 can be covered in high school, but MATH 113 does carry University credit; you can see how you fare on this material by looking at the course syllabus for MATH 113, and perhaps checking out some past MATH 113 exams on TESTBANK, our online archive of past exams.

The advice here would be the same as above, with some additions. First, if you can get a good preparation in the precalculus material in high school--do it!--so long as you still get a solid algebra preparation. Every course opportunity in college is precious (not to mention expensive), and it is better to do in high school what you can.

Second, be careful about your choice of calculus sequence. MATH 120 is the right choice for most business or econ majors, but it imposes limits. For example, it is unwise (perhaps suicidal) to attempt graduate school in Economics after advancing in math only through the level of first year calculus. (Former Math/Econ double majors tell us that the math classes most useful to them in Economics grad school were their junior level theory-and-proof courses, Math 410 and 411.)

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