CU Boulder study guides, course by course
CU Boulder's gateway courses run big: large lectures, recitation sections doing the real diagnostic work, and curved exams across the engineering college's APPM/PHYS/CHEM cluster. The CSCI core has a strong project culture — multi-week assignments in C++ and C that punish late starts — and Boulder also serves a large online population through its Coursera-based graduate programs, so plenty of students are working through these course topics on their own schedule.
CU Boulder courses use a subject abbreviation plus a four-digit number — CSCI 2270, APPM 1350, PHYS 1110. One quirk trips up new students: engineering majors take calculus through Applied Math (APPM 1350) while arts-and-sciences majors take the Math department's version (MATH 1300), and the two tracks aren't interchangeable in most degree plans.
Fennie is independent and not affiliated with University of Colorado Boulder.
Use Fennie at CU BoulderComputer Science
CSCI 1300 — Computer Science 1: Starting Computing
CSCI 1300 is CU Boulder's first programming course for CS majors and minors, taught in C++ — variables, control flow, functions, arrays, and intro object concepts — with weekly recitations and a project-heavy assignment load. It's the gate into the rest of the CSCI core.
CSCI 2270 — Computer Science 2: Data Structures
CSCI 2270 is the second course in CU Boulder's CS core — linked lists, stacks, queues, binary search trees, hash tables, and graphs, implemented in C++ with pointers and manual memory management. It's the course Boulder CS students most often name as the major's first real filter.
CSCI 2824 — Discrete Structures
CSCI 2824 is CU Boulder's discrete math course for CS majors — logic, proof techniques, set theory, induction, counting, and graph theory. It's most students' first encounter with writing mathematical proofs, and it underpins the algorithms course that follows.
CSCI 2400 — Computer Systems
CSCI 2400 takes CU Boulder CS students below the language level — data representation, C and assembly, the memory hierarchy, and how programs actually execute — built around a famous sequence of hands-on labs including the bomb lab, where you defuse a binary by reading its assembly.
CSCI 3104 — Algorithms
CSCI 3104 is CU Boulder's algorithms course — design paradigms like divide-and-conquer, greedy, and dynamic programming, plus graph algorithms and complexity analysis — sitting at the top of the CS core and assuming both CSCI 2270's structures and CSCI 2824's proofs.
CSCI 3308 — Software Development Methods and Tools
CSCI 3308 teaches the working-engineer toolchain CU Boulder's other courses skip — git, Linux, databases, web frameworks, testing, and deployment — organized around a semester-long team project that builds and ships a real web application.
Applied Mathematics
APPM 1350 — Calculus 1 for Engineers
APPM 1350 is the engineering college's Calculus 1 — limits, derivatives, applications of differentiation, and intro integration — required for nearly every CU Boulder engineering major. It runs faster and more applied than the MATH department's equivalent, with common exams across sections.
APPM 1360 — Calculus 2 for Engineers
APPM 1360 continues the engineering calculus sequence — integration techniques and applications, improper integrals, and infinite series through Taylor's theorem. CU Boulder engineering students widely consider it the harder half of the first-year pair.
APPM 2360 — Introduction to Differential Equations with Linear Algebra
APPM 2360 packs two subjects into one engineering requirement: ordinary differential equations and linear algebra — matrices, vector spaces, eigenvalues — converging in systems of linear differential equations. It's known for substantial MATLAB-based group projects alongside the exams.
Mathematics
Chemistry
Physics
PHYS 1110 — General Physics 1
PHYS 1110 is CU Boulder's calculus-based mechanics course — kinematics, Newton's laws, energy, momentum, and rotation — required across engineering and physical science majors, with curved exams and a strong department culture of conceptual, clicker-question teaching.
PHYS 1120 — General Physics 2
PHYS 1120 is the electricity-and-magnetism half of CU Boulder's calculus-based physics sequence — electric fields and potential, circuits, magnetism, induction, and electromagnetic waves — required for most engineering majors after PHYS 1110.
Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Economics
ECON 2010 — Principles of Microeconomics
ECON 2010 is CU Boulder's introductory microeconomics — supply and demand, elasticity, consumer and firm behavior, and market structures — one of the university's largest courses, serving econ majors, business-minded students, and gen-ed seekers alike.
ECON 2020 — Principles of Macroeconomics
ECON 2020 is the macroeconomics half of CU Boulder's principles pair — GDP, inflation, unemployment, aggregate demand and supply, and fiscal and monetary policy — taught in large lectures with exams carrying most of the grade.
Psychology and Neuroscience
Program for Writing and Rhetoric
Studying at CU Boulder?
Upload your course materials and Fennie generates Daily Plans paced to your deadlines — plus chat, flashcards, and quizzes built from your own courses.
Get started free