Prospective Students Guide FAQs
1. Is it absolutely necessary that I complete this form?
Yes
2. What should I put in the blank “Number/Designation?” The idea is to be able to match the courses you’ve taken to their appearance on your transcript. So if you had taken calculus here, for example, you would write “MAT 21A, Calculus I” for the number/designation. Basically, you should write the name and number (if any) of the course that appears on your transcript. “School” is the institution from which you took the course, i.e. the school providing the transcript of your grade for that course. For “grade” we’d prefer a letter grade, but if you received a number grade, put that down as long as we know what the maximum number possible is. E.G., tell us you received “85/100”, or “4.2/5”.
3. I have taken the course listed in the first part of the form but in our school we have different names – for example “calculus” is included in my school’s course “advanced mathematics”. Or my school’s course “management economics” is mainly concerned with “microeconomics”. What do I do? Write the names of the courses you have had over the names we have put in those boxes. E.G. write “advanced mathematics” in the box where we have put “calculus”. Just confirm that your courses contain similar content to the UCD courses we suggest in the second table as being appropriate for fulfilling the prerequisites. Brief descriptions of each of those courses can be found by matching the sample courses shown on the prerequisite form (e.g. MAT 21A and B) to their listings in the UC Davis online course catalog that is available at http://registrar.ucdavis.edu/UCDWebCatalog/. If you are still concerned about this, you could either contact the departments of our prerequisite courses and try to obtain syllabi for the courses in question, or send us the syllabi for the related courses you have taken, so that we could assess whether they are similar to what we would expect.
4. If I have to take some of these courses, is it possible for me to take them after I am accepted by your school and/or may I take them after becoming a registered student in your program? If you are accepted into the TTP program, you may take the courses either before arriving at UC Davis or after you have registered in the program. The second portion of the form requires you to identify when and where you plan to take each unfulfilled prerequisite. E.g., calculus 1 at Yuba Community College in summer 2003, microecon as ECN 100 at UCD in fall 2003, etc. This plan can change as time goes on (in which case you need to file a new form), but we want you to consciously plan what to do about the requirements. It is important that you fulfill the prerequisites as soon as possible. They are in place for a reason, and you will be disadvantaged in other program courses if you have not had them. Whether explicitly stated as a prerequisite or not, other program courses will assume familiarity with the prerequisites.
5. If I manage to struggle through my TTP program without one or more of these prerequisites, can’t I have the requirement waived at the end? No. Selectively waiving the requirements would not be fair to those who take them seriously as we ask, and who go to some trouble to get them out of the way at the beginning. There are no exceptions to this policy.
6. If I have to take some of these courses, do I have to take them for a letter grade? We will accept a Pass or Satisfactory grade as fulfilling the prerequisite. If your knowledge of the course contents isn’t at the level of a solid B or better, you will be defeating the purpose of the prerequisite, i.e. adequate preparation for future courses.
7. If I take these courses after enrolling at UCD, will they count toward my graduate degree? No. (Nor will they count toward the degree if taken elsewhere, but the question is most likely to arise when taken after enrolling in the TTP program).
8. Can’t I just audit any prerequisite courses I don’t already have? No. If we let anyone audit a prerequisite, we couldn’t require anyone else to take it formally, in which case we have no ability to enforce the prerequisites at all. It is also human nature that when only auditing a class, there is little motivation to do the assignments and really learn the material as well as it needs to be learned. As noted above, we do at least allow prerequisites to be taken on a pass/fail basis rather than for a letter grade. Alternatively, as noted below, you can “place out” of a prerequisite by exam (perhaps after auditing the class), provided you find an appropriate instructor willing to administer and grade the exam.
9. I haven’t exactly taken one (or more) of the prerequisite courses, but I feel that I have obtained the knowledge covered by that class through other means. Can I “place out” of the requirement by taking an exam? Yes. You will need to find an instructor of the class (either here at UCD or at another school) who is willing to administer the final exam for that course to you, grade it, and e-mail your grade to the TTP graduate assistant. If the instructor is not at UCD, the exam itself should be mailed to us so that we can ascertain that it covers a breadth similar to that of our prerequisite.
10. I can’t download the form. What do I do? First of all you need to make sure you have Adobe Acrobat reader downloaded onto your computer. It is available free of charge from the internet. If you have already done that and you still can’t download the form, please contact TTP Graduate Program Coordinator.
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