Choosing Your Courses

• You should research professors and courses. People, on average spend 3 minutes researching a blind date that lasts 3 to 4 hours, and 0 minutes choosing a course that lasts 3 to 4 months. What can you do?
• Ask friends for information about previous courses and their instructors.
• Talk to your advisor about the instructor and course. They've heard it all from their previous student advisees. They will be a wealth of knowledge.
• A report from Harvard University talks of developing a schedule of classes as putting together a portfolio of classes. Students need to look at their courses as a whole -- What about the class size, labs, writing courses, the amount of reading -- as opposed to four or five individual classes.
• Develop a schedule that combines general education requirements with upper level courses. Why? Introductory classes will not have the in-depth course content that allows a student to experience advanced level work in their major. This type of experimentation gives students the opportunity to decide about their academic direction earlier on.
• Choose courses that you like no matter how hard they may sound.
• If your unsure about a course try to audit the course first and then take it for credit. You'll already have done the reading and taken the notes for the class.
• Classes can be taken at other schools. Credit, not grades, will transfer from one school to the other (as long as the transfer grade is at least a "C"). Your GPA will not be affected if you get a low grade.