[whorleater]

Prerequisites for classes are oftentimes a suggestion, you can easily get into a class you don't meet the prerequisites for by simply signing up for the class (most class registration systems don't bar this), or by emailing the professor and getting an override. Furthermore, if you're a non-degree seeking student, the university cares very little about you, so you can skate by with a lot more freedom with classes.

[Roodgorf]

> most class registration systems don't bar this

Interesting, anecdotally, I went to three different universities and they all barred this from happening without an explicit override from a professor or occasionally an adviser. Just curious what experience you have that makes you say this?

[whorleater]

Huh, I've attended classes at two universities: one for my undergraduate and one while I was in HS, and neither had a system in place to explicitly bar you from registering for a class whose pre-reqs you didn't fulfill. At best you'd get a scary message confirmation message telling asking you "You don't meet the pre-reqs, you may be dropped from the class, are you sure?".

Also, at least when I was an undergrad, the Banner student system (from ellucian company) had no system in place for barring you from registering from classes. This was frequently the point of discussion between the professors that I TA'd for.

[svanderbleek]

Interesting. Certainly something to consider. I never thought about being a non-degree seeking student.

[qrendel]

Eh, if you're just auditing the class, maybe. When I was in college they made me retake ridiculous prereqs for the most trivial of reasons every time I transferred, allowed no exceptions to these, and personal requests to professors to get out of them were completely ignored. The prereqs were enforced by the computerized registration system - good luck getting past them without a waiver.

As one anecdote, they once told me I needed to retake intro physics. On the pretest given on the first day of class, I came within one problem of a perfect score. Didn't make a lick of difference - their syllabus differed from the last university in the most minor of ways, and despite the fact that the class never actually covered even 50% of the stuff it claimed to on the syllabus, I was made to retake the entire sequence anyway.

[whorleater]

I'll counter your anecdote with mine: in my undergrad years, I started out as a computer science major, and discovered that I wanted to do computational astrophysics 3 years into my college career, meaning that I lacked significant physics background. The Astronomy department was adamant on me "needing" to have done the basic physics classes (mechanics, E&M) before letting me into an introductory quantum physics class, even though I already possessed a working knowledge of the basics. I emailed the professor of the quantum physics class, explaining my situation, and simply ended up taking the quantum class alongside the basic physics classes.

Although I think your situation was pretty special as well, transferring universities is usually incredibly annoying and filled with road bumps. I've found there's a lot more leniency given to students who remain within the same university.

[ska]

If you are taking a degree program, it is the institutions responsibility to ensure that you have met all the requirements. If they don't have enough information on equivalence of a different institutions course, the easiest thing for them is to require you retake the sequence.

The way to get around this isn't by taking pretests (which don't mean much) it's by writing the final exams. In some institutions you will be able to do this without (full?) course fees if you are attempting to demonstrate equivalence.

[qrendel]

That's kind of my point - they could have tested me easily by giving me some problems from a previous final, or anything else, or even talking to me for five minutes, but instead they chose the path of petty legalism by assuming since the syllabus didn't agree with their's 100%, the only way to guarantee I knew the material was to make to pay to retake the entire sequence.

I failed to mention I'd also already spent three years as a physics major and had already taken classical mechanics, electrodynamics, and quantum mechanics - so being told to retake the intro physics sequence was quite silly indeed.

[ska]

It's not exactly petty legalism, they can lose their ability to grant degrees over stuff like this. This is one of the reasons that if you are transferring institutions, as a student it is your responsibility to check transfer credits. After all, it certainly isn't true that all undergraduate curriculum are equivalent.

It's a bit of a pain, but the point wasn't that they should give you some questions from the old exam but that you should actually sit the new one, under exam conditions. That resolves the problem for everyone without you having to spend the time repeating lectures etc. In the best case you don't pay full rate either.

[pbhjpbhj]

Is this a USA, it sounds like they're most concerned that you pay for the lower level courses rather than that you get a properly warranted degree.

Do they accept credits from any other institutions? Isn't there a national agreement on accepting credits for certified degrees?

[svanderbleek]

Having taken Algorithms at both undergrad and graduate levels and read through many books to prep Google/Facebook/etc interviews, I would flip out if anyone ever makes take an Algorithms class again.