Course Selection
Choosing your courses for the first time can be an intimidating
experience. As you peruse the listings in a publication called
"Course Offerings," you will no doubt come across 10 or 15
courses that pique your interest. Narrowing that list to four
or five courses is not an easy task, but you do not need to
do it alone. During course registration you will have lots
of opportunity to consult with faculty and peer advisers about
which program of study best suits your goals.
As you know, we did ask you to do some preliminary thinking
about selecting courses on the program sheet we sent you in
the Matriculation Booklet. On the A.B. form, we ask you to
list four courses you might want to take in your first term;
on the B.S.E. form, we ask what humanities or social science
electives you might want to take. Please remember that these
choices are provisional only. You are not committing yourself
to any of these selections. Given how many course choices
you have, our hope is to get you thinking now about what fields
and what courses may be of interest. Please also keep in mind
that you will want to give serious consideration to taking
a freshman seminar; you will receive the booklet with this
year's freshman
seminar choices in early July. Additionally, you will
receive a letter from the Writing
Program in mid-July letting you know which semester you
will be taking your writing seminar.
With all this in mind, look through "Course Offerings"
for the courses that interest you, but stay flexible in your
thinking as you learn of other possibilities later in the
summer. Once you arrive on campus, you will be able to take
advantage of several resources to help you make your final
decisions for fall.
Your academic adviser is an important resource. He or she
is a faculty member who understands the curriculum at Princeton.
If you are a B.S.E. candidate, the associate dean for undergraduate
affairs in the engineering school selects a member of the
engineering school's faculty to be your academic adviser.
Your particular interests within the engineering school will
be considered in assigning an adviser, but all the engineering
advisers are fully familiar with University and B.S.E. requirements.
If you are an A.B. candidate, your dean and director of studies
select your academic adviser, attempting to match your academic
interests with the scholarly interests of one of the 17 academic
advisers in your residential college. In some cases, your
adviser may represent a field that is not especially close
to the field in which you are most interested, but you can
be assured that he or she is aware of both University requirements
and significant educational issues. Moreover, if your adviser
does not know the answer to one of your questions, he or she
will know where to find it. During orientation in September,
you will have an appointment with your academic adviser to
discuss your plans for the fall before you register for classes
on-line.
In addition, a peer adviser, normally a senior, is paired
with your faculty adviser during orientation and can provide
important supplemental information from the student perspective.
You will have an opportunity to meet your academic adviser
and peer adviser over dinner with the other first-year students
in your advising group. Afterwards, the peer advisers in the
college will be available collectively to answer any questions
you may have in preparation for your individual meeting with
your academic adviser.
Before you meet with your academic adviser to discuss course
selections, you should do some research on your own. Otherwise,
nothing very meaningful can be accomplished within a half
hour or 45 minutes. Come prepared for your meeting with a
list of courses, including alternatives; do not expect your
adviser to pick your courses for you. When you meet with your
academic adviser, you may discover that he or she suggests
a particular level or "placement" within a field in which
you have expressed an interest. These placement decisions,
which are especially common in foreign languages, mathematics,
and the sciences, are made on the basis of test scores and
your high school preparation. Faculty members from the relevant
departments review your records and make a best estimate of
the level at which you are prepared and will feel challenged.
If you are an A.B. candidate, you will be given a chance
at the end of your first year to remain with your faculty
adviser or to choose another from the pool of faculty advisers
associated with your residential college. At the end of sophomore
year, when you select a major, the departmental representative
in your field of concentration becomes your primary source
of academic advice. B.S.E. candidates change advisers in the
spring of their freshman year, when they select a field of
study within engineering.
Having realistic expectations about your faculty adviser
will help you get the most from your relationship with him
or her. You cannot expect a faculty member to be able (or
willing) to rate every course in the curriculum on the qualities
of the lecturer, the appeal of the assigned readings, or the
difficulty of the exams. However, you should expect your adviser
to question you about your short-term and long-term academic
goals and to help you plan not only this semester's courses,
but also a strategy for taking the greatest possible advantage
of your undergraduate education. In addition, because your
adviser has information about your high school record and
test scores, he or she is best qualified to help you select
courses at the right level courses that will challenge but
not overwhelm you.
As mentioned earlier, your dean and director of studies are
also good sources of advice and can provide some additional
insight. Especially later in the year, when your adviser may
have gone out of town for a conference, or on a stormy afternoon
when you would just as soon not leave the environs of your
college to trudge through the rain to your adviser's office,
you may wish to turn to your dean or director of studies.
Inevitably, new students seek the advice of upperclass students,
and, in many cases, they will get sound advice especially
from the peer advisers, who have had some training in advising
and who are sensitive to the subtle nuances involved in good
advising. You should remember, however, that every student
you consult will have a unique point of view and will advise
you from a particular (sometimes peculiar) frame of reference.
For example, an upperclass student may discourage you from
taking a certain math class because it is too difficult, but
you may find this assessment inaccurate if your own high school
background in math is very strong. Conversely, an upperclass
student who successfully took a notoriously rigorous course
as a freshman might urge you too to give the course a try,
not realizing that your background in that area is not as
strong as it could be. While your RA is often a good person
with whom to discuss course selections in an informal way,
even he or she may not be familiar with all the factors necessary
for making the best decision.
Each semester the USG (Undergraduate Student Government)
Committee
on Academics publishes on its Web page the "Student
Course Guide," in which many courses are evaluated based
on questionnaires distributed to students who took those courses
during the previous year. These assessments can be helpful,
especially as they describe the workload and the specific
expectations of a given professor; they are best used as one
additional source of information to assist you in planning
your schedule, and not as the last word on the subject.
Each fall the USG and the Office of the Dean of the College
jointly sponsor "Majors Night," an event at which student
and faculty representatives from virtually all of the academic
departments assemble. Many first- and second-year students
take advantage of this opportunity to learn about the curricula
in various departments during the junior and senior years,
as well as the specific prerequisites for entering departments
as majors.
You may be unfamiliar with some disciplines, like anthropology
or philosophy, and they may seem strange and perhaps daunting;
you will already have encountered others, like mathematics
or history, and you may wish to continue studying them during
your first term at Princeton. In general, when contemplating
your schedule, it is advisable to balance the new with the
old, required courses with elective courses, and pre-professional
concerns with the ideals of a liberal education. Similarly,
electing four extremely challenging courses is as inadvisable
as electing four extremely easy ones. Explore the curriculum
with this sense of balance, and you will be able to take full
advantage of the opportunities available to you at Princeton.
If you wish to have more explicit information about a particular
course, don't hesitate to contact the professor teaching the
course. Professors enjoy discussing their fields of interest,
and they like talking with intellectually curious students.
For a written description of the reading list, requirements,
and grading policy for particular courses, you should consult
the "Course Offerings" booklet, which you received with your
matriculation materials.
As you plan a semester's program, be sure to look at the
kinds of assignments and amount of work demanded by a particular
set of courses. Balance and variety should be the goal. Although
University requirements (described below) compel you, to a
certain extent, to vary your schedule and to explore a number
of areas, you should also consider your attitude toward repetitive
or similar intellectual exercises. For example, if all your
courses required difficult textbook reading, weekly problem
sets and quizzes, and a fair amount of memorization, after
a month or two you might find yourself mentally fatigued and
desperate for new and different ways to expend your cerebral
energy. You might then wish that you had signed up for that
literature course you had considered earlier. The thought
of reading some novels and writing expository essays might
seem appealing.
It's not unusual for students to have second thoughts about
one or two of the courses they have elected. If it happens
to you, don't panic. You can always go back to your academic
adviser, dean, or director of studies to see about changing
your program.
During the first two weeks of classes you can drop and add
courses without incurring an administrative fee. After the
second week you will be charged each time you go through the
process of dropping and/or adding courses. This fee is charged
on the basis of each form that is submitted to the Office
of the Registrar; since you can make up to six changes on
a "drop/add form," you will save some money by processing
your changes on the same form. You should note that a course
cannot be added after the second week of classes unless you
have been attending the course and doing the required work
since the beginning of the term. Your attendance must be confirmed
in writing by the instructor of the course you wish to add.
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