“I Have the Perfect Schedule—All My Classes Are on Wednesday!”
Unlike the other college study guides out there, we are going to suggest that you not pick your courses.
That’s right. From our perspective, and that of your future employers, you are not picking courses, you are creating a narrative of your educational journey (your school calls it a “transcript”). The narrative doesn’t need to be ploddingly linear, but you should be able to make some sense out of it in retrospect. If there are mistakes, they should be balanced by subsequent successes. If there are successes, they should culminate in conquests.
The key to much of this is choosing professors rather than choosing courses, since the professor you pick will make or break any course.
Let’s say you enter college thinking you will be a business major. Logically you’d start off with some econ and accounting courses. But halfway through the term you can barely stomach your weekly readings and you wake up every morning dreading the day’s classes. Shock of all shocks, the biology course you are taking called “Mechanisms of Cellular Organization” to complete your science requirement has turned out to be fairly fascinating. You like the professor so much that you take another class from him and get his recommendations on other profs in the department you should consider.
By your junior year, you’re a biomed major. Remember those business classes that turned out to be a dud? Well, you’ve started noticing some parallels, in that it seems the survival of businesses reflects a lot of evolutionary dynamics. Add to that the anthropology and sociology courses you took—“Tribal Stories of Origin” and “Culturomics”—as well as perhaps fulfilling your PE requirement with “Aboriginal Dance”—and you are looking pretty learned and well-rounded.
While that may not be your personal narrative of choice, the point is that the resulting transcript is one of breadth and depth; there is a broad range of courses but also a deep engagement in one or two areas. To turbocharge this sample transcript, you might take a couple of grad-level courses to show real mastery beyond merely fulfilling graduation requirements.
What if venturing out into unknown fields of knowledge leads to a couple of landmines (also known as bad grades)? Good question. The fear of bad grades often prevents students from getting the best out of college, and it shouldn’t. Bad grades in your freshman year are more easily explained than they are in your senior year—so in the scenario above, that graduate could easily explain how losing interest and failing in his business major led to a newfound passion in the economics of survival. However, had this student waited until his junior year to admit defeat in his business courses and experiment elsewhere, it would have been much harder to explain.
Should you fall short of the ideal GPA, try at least to build an interesting narrative. The example we gave showed a rather obvious pattern. Obvious is nice; however, it isn’t necessary.
We have seen transcripts that at first blush suggest total random whimsy. However, it turns out the students took as many courses from “star professors” as possible, resulting in a hopscotch across the pantheon of the university. What they lost in systematic progression, their narratives more than made up in quality of individual chapters. A diverse transcript with a spectrum of profs across your major department and across departments in the university will speak well of you even if your GPA is a bit lower than another student who took a safer route, since it shows you are not afraid to take calculated risks. If you perform well in at least one or two of those classes, you will hopefully earn a strong letter of recommendation that emphasizes your intellectual courage and puts the rest of your GPA in context.
Pick your courses according to the following priorities:
1. Reputation of the professor as a teacher/scholar
2. Reputation of this particular course as a course
3. Your intrinsic interest in the topic
4. Level of difficulty so you can balance out your schedule
5. Any graduation/distribution requirements
6. The convenience of the time slot for the course
Most students select their courses using the exact opposite priority scale. Most students, as a result, are not getting the best out of college.
Beyond your own satisfaction at having gotten the most bang for your buck in your college experience, the overall goal in building a narrative via your course selection is to present a thoughtful, well-educated, well-rounded individual to future employers. While they do tend to look at an applicant’s GPA, the transcript coupled with your resume are in some ways a teaser that will hopefully make you an intriguing prospect for an interview. Then, should you make it as far as the interview process, the opportunity to discuss the themes behind your educational narrative will make your application all the more interesting. And, as we all know, the more interesting the candidate, the more interested the employer. The same holds true of applying to grad schools.
If you aren’t a top-down thinker (meaning that you find it difficult to plan beyond next semester), don’t panic. We’ve got some bottom-up strategies spelled out later in the chapter to help you secure your footing as you make your way through the course guide.
When I got to college, I couldn’t wait to pick my schedule. I have never been a morning person, but I soon realized that taking only afternoon classes made my day significantly less productive, so the next semester I switched it up. By taking classes in the morning (maybe not all at 8 a.m., but certainly a large percentage of early classes), I was able to finish my studies well before I would have even been awake the previous semester. This gave me more time to get things done and made it easier to manage my time.
Lauren—sophomore, Northeastern U
Granted, you may have pushed yourself through endless mornings of 5 a.m. alarms in high school with the promise that once you got to college you wouldn’t roll out of bed until noon, but we’re about to serve up some disappointment: choosing your schedule based on how late the courses allow you to sleep in is not the breakfast of champions.
Your best bet in selecting classes is to start off by asking your peers which professors to take. Be sure to set aside a fair chunk of time to do this (meaning, not the night before registration begins), since you will need to ask advice from a wide range of students to hedge against the possibility that one or two had a trivial pet peeve. You’ll want to ask questions that are specific about the students’ likes or dislikes in terms of course load, timing, teaching style, grading scale, fairness, availability, and so on—and weigh their teacher preferences accordingly. Look for firsthand advice from upperclassmen as opposed to hearsay from newly minted freshmen.
• What were highlights/lowlights of the course?
• What seems to excite this prof?
• How manageable is the workload, and do you have any advice on making it work?
• What was the quality of feedback for grading (and did your final actually have grades/comments on it, and did you pick it up)?
• Did you feel prepared for this course?
• Did you find that the information taught in this course was worth your investment of time and tuition?
Other sources of information on professors include, not surprisingly, professors! However, while profs may know a great deal about the backgrounds of other professors, they won’t necessarily know much about how that professor teaches. In fact, for professional reasons, they may be reluctant to tell you what they know about the professor’s reputation—like, “avoid that prof—but they may be willing to suggest colleagues you might enjoy, so listen just as carefully to what they don’t suggest as to what they do.
There are also online evaluations to consider, but be wary here. These sorts of tools tend to be very skewed; they cater to the extremes, drawing students who more often feel the need to vent than to praise, and at times even allowing profs to leave their own reviews.
Finally, once you have narrowed your search to a few potential professors, consider attending one of their lectures a semester beforehand to observe their style and how the students respond in class (panicked, attentive, snoozing, on the edges of their seats, and so on. When we said start your seach early, we meant it!). You might even be able to walk out with a couple of students after class and ask a few specific questions about their experience with this prof and whether or not today’s lecture was typical. Should you decide to follow our advice, take two things into account: First, please choose a large lecture where your presence will not be noted (and thus disruptive). Second, give very little value to the fact that you will feel completely lost by the content, since that is to be expected.
If the professor you are interested in observing doesn’t offer lectures but is primarily a seminar instructor, keep reading.
Be wary of people who give you advice on course numbers instead of specific professors. While a class’s content on its own might seem good or bad, a good professor can make a bad class worth it and a bad professor can turn a good class into a nightmare.
Helen—sophomore, U of Chicago
No matter what advice you hear, remember that it’s only advice, not divine command (or popular vote). In fact, we have some advice about the advice you will be getting: filter it through a sieve called “know thyself.” Two anecdotes make our point.
Without realizing what she’d done, Pearl requested “Literature and the Arts” to fulfill her freshman writing requirement first semester, primarily because the description of the course sounded fascinating. However, once she arrived on campus, other students started to warn her that she had picked the hardest freshman lit class at the university and that it would be a ton of work and she should try to switch immediately—actually multiple sources agreed. She panicked. But the textbook looked so amazing, and the one day of class she had attended made her want to memorize everything the professor said. In the end, she found one former student who admitted that the course was a lot of work but also argued that it was well worth it. He gave her a few tips on how to balance the load and how to discern the must-read from the nice-to-read on the syllabus, and with that she kept the class. Years later, if you ask Pearl what was her favorite course of her college career, she will cite “Literature and the Arts” as an easy winner.
By the way, she did make good use of her peers’ advice. Rather than being caught unaware and later being overwhelmed by the impossible workload, she was ready for it and knew a few moves to keep herself afloat. In the end, her research paid off.
Want another course-hunting anecdote?
Sure you do. Jerry was looking for a good course in the history department, so he began asking around about a professor whose course description sounded interesting. Of the two or three people he asked, all adamantly disliked the professor. They said her teaching style was mind-numbing because she used PowerPoint slides with bullets for every single point she made, her syllabus was color-coded (which they found insulting), and she assigned a ton of reading to compensate for only having two lectures a week. Jerry signed on immediately. Why? After asking very specific questions about this professor, what he heard was that her teaching style didn’t match his friends’ learning styles, but it did match his.
He had been having difficulty following some previous professors’ lectures, so the idea of a PowerPoint outline was a relief. And, not willing to admit it to his friends, he color-coded his lab notes because it helped him stay organized and ahead of his deadlines. Sure, no one likes a ton of reading, but since he’d already taken a look at the subject matter, it didn’t seem as daunting as they made it out to be. It turned out to be a great match for him.
The key is discovering early on how you learn best. Part of that discovery will be learning which teaching styles definitely don’t work for you. But rather than learning the hard way—stuck in a course you dislike for a whole semester—you could swing by the counseling center in the first few weeks of the semester to have them help you pinpoint your learning style. Or check out the book Study Smart, Study Less to help identify and work toward your learning strengths.
This is some of the best advice you could get: choose your courses by professor and make other considerations secondary. During my sophomore year, I was nervous about taking a constitutional law course with a famous law professor because the final exam counted for 100 percent of the final grade. Lucky for me, I didn’t let that scare me off. The course turned out to be one of the best I ever took. My classmates thought so too—at the end of the last lecture all 120 people in the lecture hall gave the prof a standing ovation. It literally gave me chills.
Hans—recent grad, Duke U
Every university has a different way of counting credits and course hours. Whatever that method may be, do your best to stick with the average recommended by your advisor for your freshman year: too few courses and you’ll probably waste time and run the risk of working inefficiently; too many courses and you’ll run the risk of burnout, not to mention have little possibility of building friendships.
Professors understand the way courses are weighted at their university and for the most part will stick to that definition in assigning workloads in their courses. Unless you’ve got a particularly devious prof, he won’t grant his course a low number of credits and then assign work as though it were worth the greatest number of credits possible. Of course, the real challenge is that not all equivalently weighted courses are, in fact, equivalent in workload. Across departments and within departments, some courses are harder than others.
It takes great skill to balance the number of time-intensive courses each term (such as labs or lit courses with a ton of reading and extra assignments) with “easy” courses. (Be aware that even though these “easy” courses are meant to lighten your load, they still require diligence, and a poor grade here will carry the same weight as a poor grade in a harder course.) Also, taking five “easy” courses worth three units is not the same as three “hard” courses worth five units, even though both scenarios total fifteen units. The more courses you sign up for, the more professor relationships you will need to manage, the more syllabi you will need to track, the more classes you will need to attend, and the more finals you will need to ace. Your advisor is there to help you strategize your semester lineup, so why make the process unnecessarily difficult by trying to figure it out on your own?
Knowing yourself as you do, if you really think you can handle an extra course above the average for a semester, then give it a go. Register for the class and use your one- to two-week window to practice balancing all those courses at once.
Be sure to communicate your intentions with the prof of this extra course in advance, and explain that you are trying to choose courses cautiously. This will build a professional rapport with your prof. Should you have to back out at the end of week two and take the course next term, you will have begun a mature relationship with the professor and possibly have earned her respect as well. Of course, this means that if you decide to back out, you do so at the university’s appointed time. Waiting until a few weeks from the end of the semester to beg forgiveness for your frailties and ask that you be deleted without record from the course won’t go over so well. At most schools, it can’t be granted regardless of how smoothly you make the request.
If location is an issue with close scheduling (meaning that taking two courses back to back will make you either miss out on the end of one or be consistently late to the other), work it out with your profs in the first week of class to be sure you have their blessing.
It almost goes without saying that this trial period only works if you are in fact doing all of the assignments and attending every class. Since most profs don’t take attendance or require weekly homework, it is easy to shirk some of the workload and give yourself a false sense of security that you can handle the load. The amount of work in the first two weeks may be less than what is ahead for the rest of the term (only the course syllabus can tell you that); be diligent and make the trial as close to realistic as possible. If there is a paper due in a month, start it now just so you can see how well it works into the routine.
Though the labels vary from school to school, there are almost always two sets of grad requirements: general education (that everyone has regardless of major) and major requirements (that vary from department to department). Each involves a prescribed series that looks like a Chinese restaurant menu (take one from column A, two from column B, and so on).
Though they may seem utterly random, both sets of constraints were developed through an agonizing political process involving faculty and administrators. A lot of smart people invested hours of committee time and enormous thought and effort into designing a horse, and in the process created a camel. Every set of requirements has its own implied narrative that aims to take students along an intellectual journey, visiting places that students might not otherwise visit and dwelling in some places longer than students might otherwise stay.
Undergrads tend to have one of two equally bad reactions to general education requirements. Some view them as an insult to be resisted as long as possible and then only grudgingly indulged. Others view the requirements as a game of speed bingo, racing as fast as they can from the dinging of Day One to fulfill the requirements with no thought whatsoever as to the quality of the courses.
Don’t be like most students.
View graduation requirements as an invitation to embark on a variety of intellectual excursions that you otherwise would not have taken. As much as you can, grab only good classes as they become available rather than accepting whatever is offered this semester just so you can check off that box. If you choose your grad reqs well, you may be surprised to find, years later, that some were among your favorite and most memorable courses.
Some students take comfort in finishing their grad requirements early but have no idea by the end of them what they are majoring in or where their interests lie. There is no harm in spreading out general requirements over four years. In fact, it might be advisable to save a couple for your last year if that means you will be better able to use the requirements as they were designed to be used—to help you find your major in the early years, to complement your major in the later years, and to broaden your academics throughout. Though there is certainly the danger of having fewer choices if you leave many until your senior year, chances are that you will fulfill more reqs along the way than you realize just by taking courses (strategically) for your major.
You should make it a goal to choose the most vibrant courses possible when it comes time to fulfill a requirement. Go for the best courses, whatever they might be at your school: “Ancient Egyptian Literature,” “Social Dance,” or “How the Harmonica Shaped the American South.” A priority should definitely be placed on discovering your major and possibly using your general ed reqs to do so. We have much more to say on choosing your major—in fact, a whole chapter’s worth (in chapter 11)—but for now let’s just say that your major is the cake and the general education reqs are the frosting.
View graduation requirements as an invitation to embark on a variety of intellectual excursions that you otherwise would not have taken.
Plan to take at least one course within your potential and then actual major each semester to build depth. Over a couple of years, you will have banked some considerable knowledge in your field, not to mention discovered some great profs early on so you can spend the next couple of years getting to know them better. However, too much of a good thing can be just plain too much. Don’t take more than two courses in a department in a semester except, perhaps, for one intensive semester in your junior or senior year.
If only bad courses came with a truth-in-advertising label, like hot-dog packages that tell us what’s actually inside (not that we really want to know, right?). It is, alas, not that simple. For one thing, much of what will make or break a course for you will be your personal learning style. We can, however, offer some insider advice.
Be thoughtful about taking summer courses. While we’ve known our share of great profs who teach in the summer, the courses are typically of lower quality. The top students will most likely be gone doing exciting things for the summer (and don’t kid yourself—your peers are an asset in your courses), and your profs may be a little weary from the year. Of course, we recognize that summer classes may be necessary for varsity athletes or students trying to finish early (or catch up) in order to save money. And we recognize that some students like to take their most challenging course, like statistics or a science prerequisite, during the summer when they can give it their full attention. This strategy is not a bad one for a course or two on rare occasions, but we have seen many students fail to get the best out of college by loading up with subpar summer options.
Beware of sexy titles and convenient times. Sometimes they mask a professor who has difficulty drawing quality students without these superficial attractions, or they may attract so many students that you won’t be able to get any face time with your prof.
Take a close look at courses taught at unpopular times as well—very good profs sometimes schedule at these times to weed out the duffers and get only good students. Granted, 8 a.m. (or, worse yet, 7 a.m.!) sounds like a ridiculous time for a lecture, especially when your hall mates were up until the wee hours singing with their good friend Bud next door, but for the right professor, a pair of earplugs and an early bedtime will be a worthwhile investment. Plus, it’s only for a semester (and heck, the rest of the adult world gets up at this time or earlier, so at least you know it isn’t deadly).
Beware of the class where the professor is undetermined. Since you want to take courses because of who is teaching them, signing on for a course where they can’t even locate a willing lecturer could be a sign of trouble. That said, the scheduling department could, by happy coincidence, land a wonderful professor. But we recommend holding off on signing up until the professor is named—or sign up with it as your extra course to be potentially dropped later.
Beware of the class taught by grad students or staff (especially if you are dropping a lot of dough for tuition). Don’t avoid them entirely. (We’d be remiss if we implied that there weren’t brilliant college staff out there that we would be privileged to hear. For that matter, every great professor started out as a grad student.) Do, however, select these courses cautiously. Likewise, don’t take too many classes from visiting profs, not because they won’t be worth it—they may be fabulous. Take one or two if you like.
One big danger of taking courses from grad students or visiting professors is that they are harder to track down to write recommendations for you later on. Another danger is that standards for entry into the course are generally lower, so the caliber of your colleagues may be lower. It’s also tough to evaluate their teaching style before taking the course since no one else may have taken a course from them. That doesn’t mean that new profs are bad profs—use your grace window, often called the “drop-add period,” during which schools let you change courses easily, so that you can test out if they’re right for you.
“LAW SCHOOLS AND EMPLOYERS REQUIRE HIGH GPAS, SO I WON’T TAKE ANYTHING HARD”
If grad school is your aim, you need to do some serious planning early on with an advisor in that department. If you specifically have law school in mind, see an advisor in the law department for suggestions on how to craft your transcript. Some schools hold LSAT scores and GPA of equal value, so it will help you plan your transcript if you know your options.
Ideally you want a 4.0 with a challenging course load. Who doesn’t? But don’t be fooled by the glamour of a high GPA. Once you are over the hurdle of the minimum GPA, schools will evaluate what went into that GPA. A 3.8 with an array of tough courses is more impressive than a 3.9 with a lighter course load.
The earlier you know you will be applying to law school, med school, or grad school, the better you will be able to tailor your transcript accordingly. However, if you have built a transcript that amounts to an interesting narrative on its own terms, then it probably doesn’t matter all that much. Each type of graduate school has its own special requirements, so you will need to research your course-selection needs as they apply to that school. For instance, a senior thesis is important if you want to apply to a PhD program, but it matters less for law school; certain science classes are requirements for medical school, whereas law schools are less interested in what classes you chose (as long as they were challenging) and more concerned with the overall GPA.
Knowing which specific schools you would like to attend and what their requirements are will be your best guide. We feel your stress. This probably seems like a lot to ask of you early on, especially if you are not yet a freshman or sophomore and graduation feels so far away (not to mention that it feels like you just figured out what college to attend!). But graduation isn’t as far off as you think. These next four years will evaporate twice as fast as the last four did. And your top-choice schools will expect to see forethought on your part when it comes to meeting their expectations.
Beware of the course that sounds too good to be true—it probably is. Alex dreaded a particular course requirement, so he took a class because other students told him it was guaranteed to be a breeze. His hopes were confirmed when he saw a substantial contingent of well-known slackers in class the first day. What he didn’t bank on was that the professor had also heard her course being called “a breeze.” Offended, she set out to regain some respect for herself and the course. It led to an obnoxiously difficult semester. To make matters worse, the prof wasn’t even that interesting. Alex admits that he should have considered the source; if a goof-off swears by the course, do a bit more research to be sure it is worth your time and money.
Be sure you know the prof’s expectations before signing up. He could expect his students to research topics that he can use in his upcoming book, or require that a different student give a lecture each week while he sits back and grades them. Anything is possible. It’s best to know a little more about what’s in store for the semester. This is what the syllabus is for. Read it all the way through and ask the prof about anything that is unclear. Most professors share their vision for the course in the opening lecture. Pay attention to that lecture and that vision, and talk to him about it. It is not a guarantee—the prof’s ambition may exceed his reach—but it will give you a sense of what he expects and thus what you can expect. You are paying good money to learn from this man—make sure he’s worth it.
Though it may sound like it, the following story is not an exaggerated account—honest. (And, yes, it really was a man.) Meet Edward. He refused to meet with his advisor to go over his schedule for the spring term. Meet Edward’s advisor, who emailed him a reminder early on that he needed to make an appointment with her so she could give him his registration password. Instead, he ignored her emails and called the night before registration and requested his access number (which you typically can only get by meeting with your advisor in person). He said he needed it right away. He also told his advisor that he didn’t have time to schedule a face-to-face appointment, and he didn’t have time to talk on the phone because he was on his way to—wait for it—his hair appointment. Really. He prioritized his coif over multiple thousands of dollars he was paying in tuition for courses he wasn’t sure he needed to take.
Be sure you are taking full advantage of campus resources, such as the career center (more on that in chapter 9) and especially your advisor. Make a priority of meeting with advisors, profs, or even heads of your major department long before the scheduling rush to be sure you’re taking the best courses possible. If, for example, you tell them you’re feeling frustrated with your classes, they might be able to find some flaws in your schedule that are leading to your frustration. It could be that you have had really poor luck with professors, or you may discover you have a learning disability that is giving you an unfair disadvantage. Whatever the cause, seek help early—after all, that’s part of what you’re paying for and thus a big part of getting the best out of college.
Every college offers far more exciting courses than any student is capable of cramming into four years. You are standing at a buffet line of a five-star establishment. Don’t settle for beans and weenies. Even if your college seems smaller than most, and thus may not have as many flashy course offerings, don’t be discouraged. You may have to search a bit harder, but you will definitely find the WOW courses that will jazz up your personal narrative and make your college experience memorable.