Need help for son !

joeyhunter · February 21, 2012, 07:52:12 PM

hopefully someone can help me. My son is in the process of selecting his high school courses. He would like to attend college for a career of Forestry! He would like to know what classes he should take to prepare him for college (Forestry)! Thanks for any help we get . e-mail : mjgsr69@comcast.net

WDH · February 21, 2012, 08:00:29 PM

Believe it or not, physics, chemistry, and calculus. It is very science based. When I went to Forestry school, I had to take two biology courses, two inorganic chemistry courses, one organic chemistry courses, two physics courses, and calculus. This weeds out a lot of candidates. I am not sure what the Core Curriculum requirements are now, but I am sure that they have a heavy science base. You can probably see the Core Curriculum requirements for the College of your choice on-line.

Where does he want to go to school?

OK, I went on-line and looked. Here is a link to the required pre-professional courses required to be admitted to the Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources at the Univ. of Georgia. Not as tough as when I went through, but plenty tough all the same. http://www.warnell.uga.edu/undergrad/first-year.php

celliott · February 21, 2012, 08:20:39 PM

Definitely push the math- I didn't take math my senior year and it's biting me in the butt now, having to retake a class this semester :-\

Different schools have different requirements for different degrees. Check with schools he may apply to. I know here at Paul smith's college, for a bachelors degree in forest operations, you need algebra and statistics, no calculus, and biology and chemistry. But the forest biology degree requires calculus, organic chemistry and other biology courses.

Where is he thinking of going to school?

okmulch · February 21, 2012, 08:33:25 PM

I have a forest products degree from Purdue university and I took several semesters of calculus along with one semester of nothing but forestry calculus along with engineering chemistry, as WDH said the chemistry class was a basic weed out class for the entire university whether you were in agriculture or engineering. Lots of biology and ecology classes. Luckily I had taken calculus, biology and chemistry in high school.

Okrafarmer · February 21, 2012, 08:48:44 PM

No trigonometry? I thought you had to use trig to figure out the height of trees....

I would think that statistics would be a very useful foundation.

I'm just curious, I never studied forestry formally.

WDH · February 21, 2012, 08:49:50 PM

You have to have trig in high school.

Okrafarmer · February 21, 2012, 08:52:43 PM

Quote from: WDH on February 21, 2012, 08:49:50 PM
You have to have trig in high school.

Yes, I believe that is what the OP was asking-- which high school classes would help him prepare. Not everyone takes trig in high school. I didn't.

WDH · February 21, 2012, 08:58:45 PM

Excellent point.

celliott · February 21, 2012, 09:01:03 PM

I'm pretty sure there isn't exactly formal trigonometry classes anymore, it is just integrated into other mathematics, or other classes. Like a geometry\trig section during the semester.

Shotgun · February 21, 2012, 09:13:54 PM

I would look at the website of the candidate university(ies) and see what they recommend taking in high school. You'll get a lot more factual and realistic information there than you can possibly obtain here. You have had some good suggestions here, but go to the horse's mouth, so to speak. If they don't have a good website, you might want to look elsewhere, as in another potential university. If you want a look at a good website with lots of info, Google "Michigan Technological University", and see what I mean. Your son needs accurate guidance. Surprised if his HS counsellors can't give him assistance, and get him headed in the right direction. Good luck in your search.

And don't forget English and writing instruction in HS. It's very important.

Norm

WDH · February 21, 2012, 09:16:06 PM

Trig was a separate course when I came up in the Dark Ages

. I am sure that things have changed. We had only the simplist of calculators, so a lot had to be done by hand using the tables. No need for that anymore, just push the right buttons or use the computer. Hey, progress is good!

Like Norm says, English and writing is key. Freshman English in college is a killer for many students.

celliott · February 21, 2012, 09:21:40 PM

Might want to encourage taking a public speaking class too. Helps give you confidence speaking in front of crowds, it's a great skill to have. Also required for both BS and AAS forestry degrees here. Ties right into english, you have to be able to communicate well with others, be it oratory or through letters and email's.

caveman · February 21, 2012, 09:28:37 PM

Some high schools with agriculture programs offer forestry as a class. I attempted a more detailed description earlier but it did not reach the forum. A student can learn quite a bit in such a class. If interested, let me know and I will elaborate.

park ranger · February 21, 2012, 11:45:59 PM

He will probably have to take a foreign language to get into some universities. If he can take it in high school it will be a lot easier. I had to take college german and it turned out to be one of the hardest classes of all. Forestry is a great field. There are tons of interesting jobs. The state parks in Washington is going to hire a bunch of park rangers pretty soon for the summer. Eric

Ron Wenrich · February 22, 2012, 05:31:55 AM

I'm not sure I'm qualified to address the topic, since I've been out of college for over 40 years. Back then, we needed 3 HS credits in a foreign language to qualify for college. I'm not sure that's still needed. We also needed 3 science credits, and 3 math credits. We had no calculators when I was in school. We finally got some behemoth electronic calculators that had 2 memories in my senior year in college. Computers were used only with punch cards. Technology has allowed us to make calculations a lot quicker.

I would also encourage you to look at what the accrediting agency looks for in a college. The Society of American Foresters are in charge of that, so maybe you should be looking at their site. If you're going to do the 4 year stint to get a degree, it should be one that's accredited. http://www.eforester.org/index.cfm You can find every accredited university there, with links to each university.

In college, you can branch out and take a direction that is fairly unique to you. Mine was in economics. A friend of mine took journalism. He got a better job because of the rarity of journalism among foresters. We had to have public speaking in order to graduate from college.

thecfarm · February 22, 2012, 09:25:40 AM

joeyhunter,welcome to the forum. get him on here to read and the different ways and ideas. Has he been around logging,sawmills,cutting firewood?

Texas Ranger · February 22, 2012, 10:07:11 AM

What Ron said, U of Missouri the same way. Back then.

joeyhunter · February 22, 2012, 01:40:21 PM

Thanks for all the replys! We are from PA. He is thinking like Penn State or Michigan State is his dream college(He's a big Michigan State football fan!) He is going to talk to his guidance counsler today. He might double up with Wildlife Biologist. Thanks again !!!

okmulch · February 22, 2012, 09:32:21 PM

Danny, they had slide rules back then didn't they? :D

beenthere · February 22, 2012, 10:19:30 PM

Slide rule and long hand ciphering is all we had for college course work. But could convert numbers to logarithms to do the math and then convert back using the antilogs to get the answers.

The forestry dept. had a few hand crank calculators with 10 rows and 10 columns of numbers 0-9. Then came electric calculators that did away with the hand cranks.
Mid 60's came the Wang calculators that had nixie tube displays with 4 keyboards that would run off one central electronic package that had the ability to do square roots, sums of squares and the square of the sums for statistic calculations. Then early 70's came computers that were $100k and up.

WDH · February 22, 2012, 10:24:43 PM

Aaron,

Yes

. I had a slide rule but I never was good at using it. It was a good thing that the clunky big calculators were just coming out ;D.

BT,

We had the Wangs in the lab that we used to do forest economics calculations. They seemed amazing contraptions at the time.

Ron,

I have carried a whack of key punched cards in the little boxes. Just don't drop them :D.

Like I said before, progress is a wonderful thing. Just wait, all you young whippersnappers, you day to reminiscence will come too soon :-\.

True North · February 23, 2012, 10:22:52 PM

Pennsylvania like most other states has recently adopted the "common core" standards (link attached below). Aside from the common core that is required for graduation, I think everyone gave really good advice earlier in this thread.
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10183/1069766-454.stm

Also, he could eventually find a teacher that may offer to let him do an independent study in an area he is interested in such as forestry. I had a former student raise lake trout in the classroom, and he eventually ended up working at the aquatic research lab at a nearby university when he went to college there. Also, if he can dual enroll while still in high school, he can get a jumpstart and save $$ too. The students at our school can take college math, environmental science, and other courses right at our school. They get college credit, and it does not cost them a dime. I hope this helps. Good luck!

Phorester · February 24, 2012, 10:04:23 AM

Quote from: celliott on February 21, 2012, 09:21:40 PM
Might want to encourage taking a public speaking class too. Helps give you confidence speaking in front of crowds, it's a great skill to have. Also required for both BS and AAS forestry degrees here. Ties right into english, you have to be able to communicate well with others, be it oratory or through letters and email's.

I strongly agree. He needs to take public speaking, speech, creative writing, get on a debate team, whatever. If he's into FFA, a well-run chapter will have a strong emphasis on public speaking, business, organization. Any subject related to social skills. He's not going to be in the woods by himself all the time, as most young people think. He will have to interact both one-on-one and with groups. Even if he gets a forestry job where public speaking is not done, he still needs those skills to communicate with people.

I always tell students that you can be the best forester in the world, but if you can't effectively communicate your thoughts to others, you will not accomplish much.