College courses and 101

i know this is completely irrelevant, but could someone tell me why all college courses have a name and 101 after them? its just kind of been bugging me for a while...lol :p

thanks

Class names are usually a subject, and then a level number. Like an introductory algebra class would be Algebra 101, and then as you progress more in-depth into the subject, the numbers would get progressively higher.

Completely irrelevant? You don't browse General Discussions that often, do you?

>>You don't browse General Discussions that often, do you?
i probably could browse them more =)

is there a reason it is 101 or has it just become some completely random american standard?

thanks

The numbering of the courses goes up from 101 - 999 or something. Since it's a 3 digit number, 101 is not an illogical place to start. Though with that said, I don't know why they didn't pick 000 or 100 or something. 101 is just easier to say, and now that it's caught on, there's no stopping it,

Actually its up to the college in how they number their classes.

Until this past year my college had no "high" number classes. Many used a combo of letters and a number. Like the chemistry taken for transfering students was 1A, 1B, 1C. Now they are 400, 401, 402.

Arbitrary depending on the school. At mine, courses are designated like this:
Dep.XY
Dep = Department
X = Basic course identifier
Y = Anything special about the course (letter means easy... number means hard)

E.g.
18.01 is Calc I
18.101, however, is Analysis II

Course 1XX's are meant to be taken the first year, 2XX the second year and so on.

In my University, it was levels of competence/completion in a way. In other words, to take a 300 level course (301, 322, 315, etc.) you had to have completed the 100 level class and the 200 level class. But not for all instances. Sometimes it was just the level/intensity of the class. 500 level classes were tops in my school and meant they either needed a high level of understanding of fundamentals or a high level of work. I took a 400 level African History class that was just a lot of reading and writing. I also took several 3 and 400 level scientific/engineering courses that needed the understanding of several other courses.

So no, it's not a hokey/randomly generated number system.

in mine it was 4 digits - 1301, 2318, 3543, 4320

first digit was classification 1 = freshman level, 2 = sophomore level, 3 = junior level, 4 = senior level, 6 = graduate level

second digit is credit hours (usually 3)

i think last 2 are just sequence of classes (i.e. 01 for college algebra, 03 for pre-cal, etc)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by alphaoide

Course 1XX's are meant to be taken the first year, 2XX the second year and so on.

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that was pretty much the original premise behind it - but it isn't true anymore. Mostly 100 courses are introductory, 200 - intermediate, 300-499 - advanced, 500+ - graduate

year 1,
unit 0
module 1

or equivilent?

im taking the 000 class, not going to school is hard work. No really it is, kermi wont stop im'n me about it!

Hmph! So strange, at eecs-uci, they changed the course numbers starting this year... so it's really annoying because some of old ones are new ones and vice versa... but it seems arbitrary, and our numbers are 0-99 for lowe divs, 100-199 for upper divs, 200-299 for graduate, and for whatever reason the med school is listed in the 600-699... strange!

-doubleanti

whoa....info overload...:)

ty guys

my universities standard starts at 1001

I can't think of any 1001 courses, most of the general ed classes are in the 2000 level, I've taken a 1016, thats the lowest I've seen

oh and its prefixed by three letters representing the subject, like ENC for english & communications