Hacking the Course Selection Process
Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by Luke Turcotte Putting together a semester’s class schedule is a fairly simple task, however most times you don’t realize you’ve messed up until midway through (and usually 2 days after the course drop deadline...). Here’s 5 simple things you can do to eliminate course selection regret.
Build a university career course framework.
Depending on how helpfully your school’s advisors are, this may or may not have been done for you already. By outlining which courses you plan to take each year, you can ensure that all of your pre-requisites and compulsory classes are met as well ensuring you have time to take the electives you’re really interested in. By no means do you have to adhere to this schedule, it simply serves as roadmap to keep you on track. If you’re unsure about this, speak with your advisor, they can usually help you out.
Enroll in extra courses each semester.
Is a course description really enough to decide if you’re going to enjoy a course or not? I suggest enrolling in an extra class or two and dropping the courses you enjoy the least after a few weeks. Most schools will give you a full refund if you drop a course before a certain date, use this to your advantage. Caution, make sure you mark this date on your calendar!
Talk to the professor.
At some point during the first week or so of classes, speak with the professor and get an idea of his teaching philosophy, his helpfulness during office hours, and be sure to make a judgement on his generosity (in the event you need a mark boost...). Building rapport with your professors is important in university, and a quick conversation should help you decide if they have something to offer you.
Consider the course grading format.
If you’re a real whiz on a multiple choice exam, it makes sense to exploit this fact and focus on classes with this grading format. However, you don’t want to leave university without practice in essay writing. Consider the grading scheme when selecting classes, but don’t be afraid to challenge yourself once in a while.
Don’t be afraid to take a “bird” course.
University is about balance; studying and partying, expressing and discovering, easy courses and hard courses. You’re not badass if you take a crazy course load and get sub-par marks. Bird courses are good for your sanity and will give your GPA a boost. Don’t feel guilty about taking a few.
Questions? Feel free to leave a comment or contact me at luke@hackcollege.com
Reader Comments (3)
To go even farther than simply enrolling in extra classes, I always suggest attending as many first-day classes as possible. It's usually the best way to gauge how a professor speaks, which is half of what you get out of the lecture (the other half is obviously how much work and effort you put in yourself). There were some semesters where I would attend up to a dozen different classes in the first week, and occasionally I would end up taking a much different set of courses than originally intended. Also, it's nice to get a hard copy of the syllabus to browse through.
Alex - that's a really great idea. I'm always hesitant to enroll in certain classes because I'm not sure what the workload looks like and the descriptions are kind of vague, but attending first day classes would solve a lot of my problems. Thanks!
I think one of the best ways to go is to use the website ratemyprofessors.com if your school is listed. I would suggest reading the comments that students leave for professors and that should eliminate having to attend many classes during the first week of school or even reading the syllabus. Some teachers are not rated on the site because they are new or maybe your school is not featured on the site. That way, you can save time by checking out teachers on the site. In my experience, when a teacher was good it was obvious just from the comments and the rating which is based on difficulty, workload, and other things. If the teacher was bad, it was also obvious again. If the teacher was mediocre, sort of in the middle, I would suggest sitting in on these classes just to see what reaction you get.