I’m interested in neuroscience, and checking their class scheduling policy, it seems that classes can start as early as around 7:55AM, which means that I will be absolutely toast.
Many teachers have said that in college, you can take all afternoon classes and even skip a day if you like. But for UW Madison, is this true? I don’t care about skipping a day.
I’m concerned about how possible is it to only have afternoon classes, or at least after 10am? Especially for freshman year, where upperclassmen pick classes first. Also, STEM classes like neuroscience tend to have classes in the morning and labs later.
Along with the other required classes like English, how much flexibility will a freshman have?
You’ll be taking 4 or 5 classes ans UWisc has literally thousands of classes and sections. Surely you’ll find 4 time slots in the afternoon or past 10 am.
Concrete example:
Both Communication Arts and English composition have lectures at 8.50, 9.55, 11, 12.05, 2.30pm. So, you’re good.
Assuming you’ll start in Calc 1, there would be 7 different “lectures” (main class) each with associated sections, and only one of those 7 has an 8 o’clock start time. Each lecture has several discussion sections associated with it and for each lecture one of the choices is at 7.45 and all others are later.
If you took AP Chem you’ll take Chem 109 and there may be less flexibility but because it’s a smaller, more advanced group… the schedule is at a student-favorable time, ie., not before 10 am. If you didn’t take AP Chem you’ll be in regular Gen Chem and it’ll be the same as for Comm Arts or english comp.
Most freshman classes also have late afternoon/early evening options.
So, when you build your schedule, you select all possibilities and combinations starting at 11am. There will be a lot of such combinations.
Btw do NOT try to take Calc, chem, AND bio your 1st semester. Choose only ONE science with lab to start with. With Calc (5 credits) Chem 109 (5 credits), CommA (3 credits), you just need to find a 3-credit class of interest and be done.
A larger school like Wisconsin is going to have multiple sections of almost every required class, and honestly the one that meets at 4 pm on a Friday is going to be less popular than the 9 am on MW.
It’s the smaller LACs that may only have 2 sections of a class that should concern you more. If there are only two sections and one meets at 9 and one at 8, you might be stuck. Big universities offer a lot of variety of time slots because they have too - they need to use the classrooms all day long, need to have some adjuncts teaching classes and those adjuncts may have day jobs, may have students working full time and need to offer night classes.
Be warned, the breeze coming off the lake at 9 pm can be a little brisk in Madison.