To declare a CO minor, or not to

[Kam]

Hi. I'm back to Waterloo this term after a amazing work term at San Francisco.

After updating my degree requirement checklist today, I found out that I'm almost done! I'm in my 3B term and from what is left from my checklist, I only need to take 3 more cs, 1 math, and 3 non-math (=7) courses, spanned across my 4A and 4B term.

However, the required courses to declare a CO (combinatorics & optimization) minor is not too far away. I'm currently taking CO250 (intro to optimization) and CO342 (grapth theory), and assuming i do well in these courses, i only need to take two more CO courses before I can put CO as a minor in my degree as well. However, this means that i need to take a minimum of 8 courses spanned across my 4A and 4B term.

This wouldn't be a problem normally, but I'm daring enough to take two of the top three cs (real time and graphics) in those terms as well. So, my situation now is:
1. Easy route -- Take real time + 3 non-maths in one term, graphics + another cs (prob distributed networks) + 1 math in another
2. Not-so-easy route -- Take real time + 3 non-maths, graphics + distributed networks + CO351 (network flow theory) + CO353 (computational discrete optimization) in another

I have more options for which CO courses to take, but given the list of available CO courses, I think I would be most interested in the two co courses above.

---- so, my real questions are:
1. have anybody taken co351 and/or co 353? and if so,
2. how much work is involved in each course, and relatively speaking, how difficult is it compared to other math courses (let's use math239 as the standard)
3. is the course theory based, application based, or split even between the two, or 70-30, etc.

[randint]

Not entirely on topic: I am an incoming Honours Mathematics program - entering the CO program.