<p>
</p>
<p>Be sure you’re prepared for the heavy math intensive workloads and the intro weedout experience. This goes double if you attempt to double major in history as the departments at Columbia and UPenn are both strong and will assign a fair amount of reading(100 pgs/week/course for first years…and that will rise as you advance) and paper assignments ranging from 5-10 to as much as 20-40 pages in your upper-class seminar/colloquiums. </p>
<p>If at any point in the semester you’re unclear about the course material, DON’T WAIT until midterms or worse, finals. Stay on top of your workload so you don’t fall behind as this will definitely hurt you…especially in an intro weedout courses you’re likely to encounter. </p>
<p>Make it a point to go to Prof’s/TA’s office hours not only to clarify course material, but also to build enough rapport to ask to do undergrad research, advice on careers/grad school, and grad school/employment letters of recommendation. You may need to be pro-active with Prof. access if what my HS friends’ experience with CS Profs at Columbia or UPenn still applies nowadays. </p>
<p>Good luck and hope you have a challenging, yet enjoyable fun-filled undergraduate career. :)</p>
<p>Disclosure: Graduated with History degree while taking two intro CS programming courses for majors to fulfill science requirements and out of personal interest.</p>