I don't know if I should take the entrance exam this year, or should I pause and try for the next on

Associate
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29 Jul 2015
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Hi, all.

Forgive me for such a long post, I tried to make it as short as possible by removing any unnecessary details, and leaving only the things needed. It would really mean so much to me if you would be able to read all of it to better understand my position.

Ok, here's the thing. After graduating from high school a couple of years ago, I never knew what I wanted to do in my life, so I worked a couple of jobs here and there, but nothing ever really interested me in building my career on that. I was living paycheck after paycheck without any purpose or goal. Well, a couple of years later I think I have finally found what I wanted to do in my life.

During my teens, I always loved doing some tweaking and modifications on video games whether through mods, trainers, cheat engine, etc... This got me interested in learning a couple of programming languages and creating some small applications, and this is something that I really liked to do. It was something that got me started into learning more about computer science. Unfortunately, programming was just a hobby of mine at that time, so I never bothered to go too deep into that, like create a complex app or project. It was just some small video games and chat applications that I and my friends used.

Fast forward to today, I'm preparing myself for the college entrance exam (which starts July 1st), but I'm having an anxiety problem that makes me kinda worried if I should even try this year.

The college I would like to go to (College A) is about software engineering, and according to many students, it has the best program for Computer Science out of all universities in the city I live in. The entrance exam for that college is only 10 math-based questions from a random selection of topics listed here(https://pastebin.com/jqT2Lebt).

Unfortunately, during school, I never paid much attention to math so my memory of it is really, really weak. Since a lot of years have passed after I graduated high school, all the remaining knowledge aside from the basics has basically vanished.

Because of my poor math skills, I do not believe that the time I have left (around 3.5-4 months) would be enough for me to study all of those topics to score enough points on the test and get accepted. So my next choice is to take the entrance exam for another college (College B) that has a similar program, although many people say that it is a weaker version of the previous one I mentioned.

The entrance exam for College B is a math-based one as well, but it is a lot easier compared to the first one, and I believe I would be able to pass it to get accepted. But here's where my problem lies.

I have two choices, I can either go to the college that has a weaker software engineering program, or I could pause one more year, study math really well so that I would be able to go to the College A, the one I was initially planning to enter.

Both choices have their ups and downs, on the one hand I would love to enter the college I want to go to, but on the other hand, I'm not really sure if I sacrificing yet another year, just for studying math and a slightly better program would be worth it.

Unfortunately, my anxiety kicks in whenever I make any of these two choices. If I decide to pause this year, I have this feeling of worry/unease that I'm making a really bad decision, and that the waiting yet another year to enter college would not be worth it, that sacrificing yet another year just for math and for College A are not that worth it, and that I should simply go with College B. But if I decide to study for this year, then I get the same feelings that make think that it would be better to wait just one more year because math is quite helpful in Computer Science field, that my portfolio would look better if my employer sees that I graduated from College A, etc...

So this is why I'm asking for your help because unfortunately, I can't seem to make up my mind on my own.

One more thing that I would like to add is, I'm 23 years old. If I pass the exam, I would start my first year at 24 (or 25 if I pause this year). Is this too old? Should I even bother trying, despite knowing that the majority of students are 5-6 years younger than me, or should I go back to working full-time?

Thanks in forward, and I apologize for my bad English. I was really tired when I wrote this.
 
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OP
Joined
29 Jul 2015
Posts
20
Once again, thank you, everyone, for replying. All of your replies are useful and informative :) I had a bit of an issue with my net which took my ISP some time to get it fixed, so forgive me for the late reply.

To answer some of the replies I got:

Can you take both entrance exams? I'd study like mad and you'll keep the knowledge in your head in the short term ready for the exam, but do both anyway. Ultimately it's the qualification not the college that will get you a job in the end.

So much good advice already. I agree: set college A as your target, work hard to give that your best shot. If possible, also do the test for college B. Ideally you could wait for results from both, then decide what to do?

Unfortunately, I won't be able to take both exams. Both begin at the same time, and at the same date :(

53 year old software engineer here, working in the Telecoms sector.

Thank you for your reply, @peterwalkley . One thing I wanted to ask you (and anyone else who works in this field) is; how important is math for problem solving?

I'm well aware that you could easily learn programming, data science, etc... without being good at math, but I keep hearing that the better you are with math concepts, the better your problem-solving skills become. Seeing how many things in programming derives from concepts in math (functions, vectors, matrices, etc...), do you believe having a strong foundation in math would only help me in this type of work? I actually find math very interesting and would love if I would be able to study it properly, and actually learn to improve "abstract thinking". Also, this is not only for programming but for software engineering in general.

Additionally, if I take the entrance exam this year, I think I'll be forced to rote learn math, so I hope this won't have a big negative impact on how I approach problems with their solution. I'm also worried about having trouble in class if I manage to enter college this way. This is the reason why I'm leaning towards pausing this year, but like @booyaka said, maybe I'm just overthinking this.

Once again, thank you, everyone, for replying, and pardon the late reply.
 
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