<p>I have been told that the most important things you can learn in college are the skills of listening, speaking, reading and writing.</p>
<p>I have also been told that a good liberal arts curriculum stresses the CORE over ALL FOUR YEARS. Is it possible to put your schedule together so that you always have at least one CORE class, all twelve quarters?</p>
<p>Yes. That is exactly what I am doing. I am spreading out the Core over my entire four years here.</p>
<p>During O-week we were told to try to get the Core done as soon as possible. You don’t want to be one of the fourth-years desperately looking for an open spot in an art class so you won’t be kept from graduating. Timeschedules and class registration are often quite unpredictable.</p>
<p>Fourth years get first choice for art classes. You can basically pick anything you want as a fourth year. 
If it is full you can just pink-slip into that class. They must let you in.</p>
<p>They can’t prevent you from graduating, so they’ll have to let you pink slip in. But I don’t know how the hell 1st and 2nd years can even get into art classes. I’ve been trying to get in as a 3rd year and I never can.</p>
<p>But yeah, I’m doing a similar thing as well. I’m taking Power and East Asian Civ my 4th year, in addition to Art and Bio. This is more due to procrastination than careful planning, though.</p>
<p>Which types of courses are difficult to get into? I would hate to shell out the money for S to go to UC and then have him not be able to take the courses he wants.</p>
<p>^That probably won’t happen. The only courses I’ve heard about being difficult to get into are art and music core classes. This is actually a problem, since there really just aren’t enough art and music slots to go around. But we only have to take one art/music class if we plan it the right way (i.e. three quarters of a HUMA sequence or three quarters of a CIV sequence), so this shouldn’t weigh into a decision between UChicago or somewhere else.</p>
<p>It can be difficult to get a specific professor, and some of the weird electives can also be hard to get. But in the latter case, people usually get the course eventually if they want to take it.</p>