Summer School

At Washington University's Summer School

Information about WU's Summer School is available at the WU Summer School Office located in January Hall, room 100 (314-935-6700 or 866-340-0723) .

The calculus courses (Math 131-132-233), Differential Equations (Math 217), and Elementary Probability and Statistics (Math 2200) are among the lower level courses offered at Washington University Summer School. The only upper level math course offered is Math 309 (Matrix Algebra).

Washington University students: in searching for WU Summer School mathematics courses online, look for "day" (not "evening") courses. These have department code L24.

Evening University College mathematics courses (department code U20) usually do not match up well with our regular undergraduate program, do not apply toward math major/minor requirements, and might not apply toward meeting math requirements in other majors/minors.

In particular, notice that W.U.'s University College (evening program) calculus sequence U20-155,156,255,256 consists of four courses, but that the regular day school sequence covers the same material in three courses:. L24-131, 132, 233. Therefore the evening and day courses do not correspond with each other. For example, U20-155 (Calculus I) is not the same as L24-131 (Calculus I). This is true both during the summer and during the regular academic year.

Students from other schools: notice particularly the preceding paragraph about the evening calculus sequence. Students taking any summer school courses here (or, for that matter, at any school) should always check ahead of time with their home institution to be sure the course will satisfy the requirements they need: don't just judge by the course title!

Courses from institutions such as community colleges can, if approved, transfer to WU. But no course transferred from such schools can count toward an "upper level" requirement or elective in math major or minor requirements.

Finding a course to transfer to WU as the equivalent of Math 2200: such courses will need to be approved by the Mathematics Department on a course-by-course basis. Roughly, the guidelines are that

i) It should be pretty clear that the course is not just a "general education requirement" type statistics course. Usually that's the case if the course has no prerequisites or only high school algebra. General education type statistics courses might transfer to WU as Math 1011. Ideally, the course should have at least Calculus I as a prerequisite.

ii) The course should include most of the topics from our 2200 course description, which reads:

An elementary introduction to probability and statistics. Discrete and continuous random variables, mean and variance, hypothesis testing and confidence limits, nonparametric methods, Student's t, analysis of variance, (multiple) regression, contingency tables.

iii) In particular, the course description or syllabus must include at least one of the topics ANOVA (= "analysis of variance") or multiple regression (with an explicit reference in the syllabus, in that case, to F-tests or F-statistics.) Such summer school courses are probably out there at some schools, but the inclusion of these topics is a "stretch" for many summer school programs.

Courses comparable to Math 3200 (Elementary to Intermediate Statistics with Data Analysis) will probably be hard to find at other institutions.

When there's any question about the transferability of a statistics course, the question will be referred to one or more of our statisticans who have taught the course here.

The material in the Washington University Calculus I-II-III courses (L24-131,132, 233) is more-or-less the standard material found in the Calculus I-II-III courses at other colleges and universities operating on a semester system. Therefore, coordinating calculus courses taken elsewhere with those offered at Washington University is usually not much of a problem.

However, there will be variations from school to school on such things as how technology or computer software is used, or the order in which topics are presented in certain textbooks.

Transferring Credit

If you want to take a mathematics course at another college or university, you should look at the College policies for transferring credit, make a copy of the permission form available on that page, and get a description of the course you want to take. Often, a description similar to those found in our Course Listings Book is enough. However, in some cases (for example, see Math 2200, above) more information may be needed. In all cases, a recent syllabus is best.