<p>From the very beginning, I've been impressed with the quality of Smith's advising. I offer the following as an illustration of how thoughtful and individual, as opposed to paint-by-the-numbers, the advising is.</p>
<p>D is currently in the Picker Washington D.C. program but went up to Smith last weekend to meet with profs and advisors (as well as to see friends, celebrate her birthday, etc.) </p>
<p>She had been long planning to do a interdepartmental thesis but her advisor talked her out of it on the grounds that she already will have 8 units of thesis from her Washington program and that 16 units of thesis--equivalent to a full semester--would be A Bit Much in his opinion. In lieu of thesis, they settled upon 4 units of an Intermediate Econ course...good to have if one is looking to a Masters in Public Policy...and 4 units of Special Studies in Government.</p>
<p>Then they looked at her proposed Statistics course and he said it would be ridiculous for her to burn one of her class slots on that given her background in Math. The prof there and then pulled a Statistics course book off his shelf and gave it to my D on long-term loan, telling her to study it on her own. In place of Stats in her schedule, they worked in either Econometrics (see also, Public Policy) or Experiment Design.</p>
<p>I can't argue with any of the choices. Beyond that, I'm just impressed at how much her advisors look at her courses in the context of what her individual plans are instead of making recs by cookbook.</p>