I went to an engineering college where our curriculum was 95% decided for us. We had few electives (a few choices within our major, and a few of general studies). But, as I underrstand it, this is rare.
So, whether you’re going for a Business degree, or think you’re “Pre-Med”…who tells you what courses you should take to keep you on the right path? Is there guaidance from an advisor? Or, typically, is the only structure given as “you need three English credits, five math credits, one humaities, etc…” Is it as open as all that?
My (USA) college experience was so different from the mainstream, I feel like I did not have the real college experience. - Jinx
This is probably better suited to IMHO, but I’ll chime in anyways.
I majored in physics at a liberal arts college. Looking at my transcripts, I took a total of 32 credits, of which 19 were required for either my major or my minor. Another 6 were distribution requirements: my college required you to take at least three classes each in the physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. There was still a good deal of choice within each division, though, so I really just took a course if I had room on my schedule for it and it sounded interesting. For example, I took a class in the French Literature Dept. during my senior year because I hadn’t been speaking French for a long time and I wanted to brush up.
In other words, I did have a fair amount of my schedule (about two-thirds) dictated by the requirements for my major and minor. But the rest of the courses I took were chosen on the basis of “Ooh, the Linguistics department is offering a course on Syntax! That sounds like fun!”
I dunno…I went to a typical midwestern state university to get a BS in journalism, and when I got there I was presented with a worksheet that listed areas of study, how many credits I needed in each area of study, and a list of classes I could take in each area to fulfill these requirements.
I also got the name of a prof in the journalism dept. who was assigned to help me out (and did), and some kind of counselor in the Fine Arts Dept who was supposed to help me out (but didn’t) and then another shithook counselor in the Honors College who did more to frustrate me than to help me graduate.
I think we also got huge catalogs (not course catalogs) that listed the requirement worksheets for all the majors for that school year. A new one came out every year and often the requirements changed. But we got to stick with the worksheet we got our freshman year no matter how much the journalism worksheets changed. Which means I got to take Spanish instead of Math!
Anyway, I don’t think your class requirements structure for your lofty major were much different than my humble little one
You got a BS in Journalism? I thought it fell under arts. Though here it’s always refered to as a BJ.
Last year, all my courses were chosen for me (which is to say, two, since one was a four credit course). This year I have two courses I have to take, and the rest is elective. I need a credit in Canadian history, but aside from that I’m pretty much free to take what I wanted. So how did I decide?
Eeny meeny minie moe…
(Something like that, I picked courses that interested in in various departments, and although my CS requirement was a consideration, it didn’t really limit me)
Although, after four classes were picked out and I looked at my schedule, I decided not to have my fifth on Fridays, to leave that day open. Which is why I’m not taking Introductory Hebrew, since then I would have ended up with 8:30am classes five days a week.
I have a worksheet that states my GE requirements and my Major requirements and how much room I have for electives. I look at what classes are offered, what I need, how it works on the schedule, fill out my worksheet and bring it to my advisor. He says “Are you taking the right classes?” I say “Sure” he signs it and bob’s your uncle.
Because I am in the Honors program, I register first, so I never had to worry about not getting the classes I need.
When I went to University of Michigan registration was a mess. My advisor was a moron, but I quickly found out that no one cared. You either walked down to the building, or did it over the phone, and nobody checked that an advisor had ever talked to you, or prerequisits were foinished or anything. So I pretty much took whatever I felt like. We also could take upto 22(or maybe it was 25) credits for the same tuition each semester, So I figured why waste money. I took at least 20 credit hours, usually more each time. By the time I added AP credits and stuff I had nearly 200 credits, and had fullfilled the requirments for about 5 degrees. But the good part was I took every class that interested me, no matter which department it was.
We had a DARS (Degree Auditing Reporting System, I think) report available online that told us our gen ed requirements and what the course pool to fill each requirement was. I got most of my gen eds out of the way early on by taking the most “interesting” course in a field outside my majors (I doubled in political science and philosophy).
We also got worksheets from our major departments (or, rather, could pick them up) that listed the requirements for the major and the respective concentrations. Majors were 36 credits, usually 18 required or chosen from various concentration fields for breadth, and minors were 18 with about 12 hours of specific requirements and a few “anything above the xxx level” thrown in for the rest. I tried to get the absolute requirements out of the way, and if there was one that I could fit in easily I’d try to register for it - all the more if I liked the prof. I started as a poli sci major, but after completing the minor requirements, I changed my mind and decided to be a philosophy major. I ended up completing my philosophy requirements all except for one (it was any course in the 200 level or above, as I recall) in the fall of my senior year and ended up finishing a concentrated major in poli sci (American Politics & Public Affairs) by scooping up three upper-division courses that fit in the concentration.
So, to answer your question, I grabbed requirements and let my gut do the rest.
For my undergrad, I started as one major and began with classes that were mainly in that major. Then I changed majors (twice) and by the time I settled on one, I didn’t have a lot of time to take classes for ‘fun’, not if I wanted to finish in four years - except for the JanPlan mini-term. I still needed the academic credits, but those were when I could take the fun classes.
For grad school, I started with the core classes - three the first semester, and the last two the next. Then I could start in with electives. I picked those by what looked interesting and what I though would be most likely to fit with where I wanted to work (although where I eventually decided I wanted to work wasn’t where I thought I wanted to work when I first started). I took one class for pure fun - even though I typically liked all my classes, that one was one that didn’t fit anywhere into my plan. I just wanted to take it.
By pure random stupidity, for the most part. If only I could do it over.
I started out pre-med, but quickly decided that I wanted to minimize exposure to math and chemistry. I hate chemistry and, while I don’t dislike math, I’'m never comfortable with it. This pretty much put the kibosh on my original pre-med plans, along with my incredibly low GPA. I also decided that I didn’t like the social sciences that were available except history (I detest sociology and poli sci, don’t like econ much better, and the psych professors sucked). Even though I love music, I am deplorably lacking in talent, so that was right out. At the time I also had no interest in art, but that’s changed. I took Russian for my language requirement because it seemed like it would be interesting (it wasn’t terribly, but it helped my knowledge of English). I was an English major for a while, because I like to read and write, but got sick of all the over-analysis. Finally got interested in geology, but since it would have taken forever to do all the requirements, I did an environmental science major instead. After that, I was locked into the ES requirements.
I was a handed a DIG (delcaration of intent to graduate) sheet by my advisor, one of the few useful things he ever did, the summer before I started college. It listed everything that I needed to take. Out of 120 credits, about 95 to 97 of them were totally taken up by major requirements and another 18 were from a very short list of acceptable ones. That’s, um, 115 or so of my courses I didn’t really get to choose. For those 18 credits, as I am a chem major with labs up the wazu and one class only of each of my major courses, it basically came down to you can take Econ or American politics, art history or American politics, and western civ or American politics (I refuse to take American politics). The only way that I can minor in anything is because I’ll be graduating without about 135 to 140 credits this June. Otherwise my entire college career would be chemistry, math and physics.
I’m about to be a nursing student. There are 4 determined prerequisite courses to the program, and then after that it’s all a set course of nursing classes on a set timetable. There are 5 more general education support courses, 4 of which are already determined. The one class I got to pick for myself was the humanities credit, with my choices being an English lit, music appreciation, or intro to humanities, theater, or philosophy. I’m simply taking Humanities.
I just picked whatever post-noon classes were open in the building that occasionally has parking, and noticed after three years that I was pretty close to finishing the foreign policy program…
Here at the University of Arizona, gen. ed. requirements are pretty simple, and I’ve pretty much memorized them. As an undeclared freshman, I meet with an advisor before registration and go over which classes I can/can’t/should/shouldn’t take (or any other time for any other issue related to my standing as an undeclared student).
Although things may be different in engineering/science/pre-professional study fields, generally we choose our own courses. A lot of departments lock students not studying their majors from registering for their courses until priority registration is over, so that their majors/minors get first pick. We have a general registration period about a month or so before the end of each term, and before that there is a series of priority registration periods (ie, this week athletes register, next week disabled students register, next week seniors register, next week juniors, etc.). Everyone has a priority registration period, although, again, one can only count on being able to choose courses in the GE program or their own majors/minors during this time.
- Jinx