If your placement level indicates your precalculus skills are weak, you should take precalculus. Math 115 or Math 171 are designed to provide the necessary skills for Math 221. Math 117 is designed to prepare students for Math 241. Skipping a course is not recommended since such a process leaves a definite gap in your mathematics preparation. A significant effort has been made by the University of Delaware to make your transition to college mathematics a successful one.
Many students are quite unprepared.
A special instructional staff from the Preparatory Mathematics Program of the Department of Mathematics provides special instructional support for students enrolled in Intermediate Algebra and most one hundred level math courses. This instructional staff has developed an extensive list of math courses for this purpose. These are described below. These courses carry no college credit but are useful in strengthening weak algebra skills required for the one hundred level courses. This course covers traditional Algebra II topics such as functions, linear and quadratic functions and their graphs, radicals, inequalities, operations with polynomials and rational expressions and solving linear and quadratic equations.