One year of physics and one year of mathematics as included in most physics educations is sufficient for doing this course, though depending on how your institute did it and/or how long ago you did it, the difficulty level might appear very different. The course is also a physics course that should be doable with this amount of preknowledge, which is the reason behind the way the course is given and the choice of textbook.

Physics knowledge expected

Classical mechanics
- Newton's laws
- Planetary orbits, Kepler's laws
- Gravitational potential, Poisson equation (∇²φ=4πG_Nρ)
- Some experience with fields or continuum mechanics is helpful
- Not required: Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics
Special relativity
- The basics including Lorentz transformations in one dimension (i.e. along one axis only) (This is very important. We go through it in the course but very fast).
- Knowledge of four-vector notation is not required but very helpful, since this is for some a difficulty in the beginning

Mathematics knowledge expected

Linear algebra (This is very important)
- Vectors and vectorspaces including basisvectors
- Scalar product, orthogonality
- Matrices
- Multiplication of matrices and vectors
- Coordinates (or components) and basis-vectors
- Have a look at appendix A in the book and if that does not look familiar have a look at your linear algebra again
Analysis
- Functions of several variables
- Partial derivatives
- Taylor expansions
- Not required: Differential geometry

Comments about the mathematics level of the course

General relativity is more than 100 years old now and has developed very much since the original work done. It has a reputation of being very difficult, which might have been true for a general physics student in the 1920s, but neither the mathematics nor the physics is more difficult than needed for a typical second year electromagnetism course with Maxwell's equations.

The mathematics in the course is done at an elementary level but correctly treating the mathematical parts needed. We introduce all needed mathematics above that mentioned in preknowledge part, but do not give proofs beyond showing the ideas behind the new objects. This is a deliberate choice, it is a theoretical physics course so we want to do both the mathematics decently and discuss the physics behind.

People have different interests and the audience of this course ranges from observational astronomers to mathematicians with very different backgrounds and expectations of the mathematical level. The course is somewhere in the middle between those extremes.

Differential geometry: The mathematically inclined can take the differential geometry courses offered by the mathematics department. They offer both proofs and are more general than this course. They are however not needed for understanding general relativity and in particular the first course does not reach general Riemannian geometry as used in General Relativity.