Help my friend please.

A friend of mine wants to start a OU undergraduate course and has no idea where to start.

he's 31 with only 2 GCSE's in science and suffers from general anxiety disorder :redface:

.

He hopes to one day become a self employed stock trader or some type of computer analyst.

What course would you suggest he contemplates ?
Thank you.

Reply 1

Moggs

Original post by bumblebee32

A friend of mine wants to start a OU undergraduate course and has no idea where to start.

he's 31 with only 2 GCSE's in science and suffers from general anxiety disorder :redface:

.

He hopes to one day become a self employed stock trader or some type of computer analyst.

What course would you suggest he contemplates ?
Thank you.

Maths, econ and maths, engineering maths heavy route, physics with maths heavy route. These would probably be good places to begin exploring :smile:

Probably beginning with maths modules MU123 if he's not at GCSE level, MST121 if he's not at A-level.

(edited 12 years ago)

Open University

Milton Keynes

Reply 2

matherrrrrmatician

Agree with Moggs.
Get him to try the quizzes here, so he can assess his entry point: http://mathschoices.open.ac.uk/quizzes/p1an.html

PS, Moggs, good news on the additional professional engineering accreditations awarded to the OU BEng.

Reply 3

Moggs

Original post by matherrrrrmatician

PS, Moggs, good news on the additional professional engineering accreditations awarded to the OU BEng.

this was excellent news.

Any advice for MST209 you have would also be much appreciated, as I know you scored a distinction in yours :smile:

I have the course material in advance of a Jan start, exam papers, and a place to get model answers. That's all so far.

Reply 4

matherrrrrmatician

Moggs, MST209 runs at a swift pace and the best advice is to get started on it as soon as possible.
It's not as pedantic as M208 but does squeeze a lot more in, which is the main challenge - I'd say many students (myself included) needed to put in quite a few more hours than is supposedly required in the first half of the course.

Once the material clicks for you, however, it's easier (in my opinion) to score higher than on M208.

If your physics is weak, then the second block provides a challenge, and its material is used throughout the course.

You don't need to walk around with a bunch of complicated integrals stored in your head, or be an expert in solving systems of differential equations, but you do need a good facility in seeing the bigger picture overall of a problem - the TMA and exam questions draw on aspects of several units at once.

Hence, I'd say particular fluency in units 5 to 8 is utterly vital.

MIT's 18.02 and 18.03 lecture series on multivariable calculus and differential equations will provide background to around half of the course, and can be found on Youtube.

Time is the main factor for getting through MST209, so the sooner you start, the less you'll need to skimp on, as the course progresses and you find you have a whole one week to learn, say, PDEs or vector calculus essentially from scratch.

Of all the courses in the maths programme, I'd say this one undoubtedly crams the most in (though the new M303 might rival that from 2013).

Good luck with it - I'm actually wishing I'd done the engineering degree now.