<p>I don't want to sound stupid or anything, but could someone please explain what the course numbers mean? Are they random or universal (like throughout all colleges, etc)?</p>
<p>Sorry, this whole college thing is new to me lol....</p>
<p>They don't "mean" anything so much as label the classes for administrative purposes. They aren't universal, although the rules tend to be the same.</p>
<p>Each dept. has a four-letter code, like MATH, ENGL, HIST etc. </p>
<p>This is followed by a five-digit number. Generally the first three are the only ones you care about. The first digit is kind of like the "level" of the sequence - intro classes start with a 1, intermediate starts with 2, up to grad-school courses which begin with 5. </p>
<p>The last three digits give the level relative to the other classes in the sequence. So, you know how people say things like "Econ 101"? What they mean is ECON 101000 - the first quarter of the lowest-level economics sequence. If you were taking the intermediate level Spanish sequence, you would take SPAN 20100, 20200 and 20300, etc. Usually people just say the first three numbers.</p>
<p>But like I said, the numbers are purely for keeping track of courses and giving you an idea of their location within the major program/sequence. For non-sequence classes, like one-quarter electives, they can be pretty random.</p>
<p>Grad classes start with a 3, I believe. Other than that, jack is pretty much right.</p>
<p>The precise meaning varies a lot from department to department. Some departments label anything beyond an Intro sequence with a 2----, and some label most courses for undergraduates with a 1----. And some departments use the last two digits for meaningful things, while in others they are always 00. One thing that is generally true is that 10000 and 20000 are undergraduate and 30000+ are graduate. If a course is both, it'll usually have multiple course numbers. In most Humaniities and non-econ Social Sciences, there aren't really rigid levels of advancement. There might be an intro course or two, but outside of that, you just take whatever. Sciences have a stricter, more meaningful progression of courses, I think.</p>
<p>For languages, 101-103 is the first year, 201-203 is the second year. Above 203 is typically "advanced" courses, which are designed for people who've finished two years (or have placed that high through testing).</p>