<p>How does course registration work, and how hard is it for a freshman to get into the core sequences he wants?</p>
<p>You will need to be a tad bit flexible. </p>
<p>As a first year, you will meet with your advisor and they will put your class selections into Cmore, the student information clearinghouse, for you. Upper classmen will already have registered for the fall at that time, so you will find that “hot” non-core classes will be difficult to get into for the first term only. Don’t fret though, you are on equal footing thereafter. This is also intended, since you would likely get destroyed in some class dominated by third or four years right out of the gates. </p>
<p>Still, have multiple registration plans mapped out. Know which sequences you are flexible on, and which ones are non-negotiable. If you are going to be a science major, for instance, you know that you absolutely must be in the right math and science sequences you first year. Whether you do your humanities or social science sequence, civilization or arts requirements, and in what order, does not really matter. Conversely, if you know you are going the social science route its best to hit hum and either sosc or civ immediately. As for individual professors, as a first-term-first-year you likely won’t know who is good and who is bad. Some tenured profs are really poor, while some junior profs are stellar. The key is to swap into the good sections in the second quarter after doing some dining table due diligence. You will find that the good profs melt off a lot of lazy students, who will make room for more motivated ones.</p>
<p>One thing to keep in mind is that in your first year, you’re flexible with pretty much everything EXCEPT Humanities- while it’s not technically required in the first year, no adviser will let you get away with not taking humanities your first year, regardless of your major. Basically, Hum is the time to develop your writing skill and enhance both your ability to write and your ability to read and discuss critically to “University of Chicago” level in an environment where development of such is encouraged. These skills will be invaluable to you throughout your other courses, especially in the Core, and it’s much better to have your writing style critiqued and, sometimes, ripped apart and reassembled in Hum, where you have a lot of support, than in an upper-level class, where you’ll just look like that kid who didn’t take Hum. So, especially for your first registration, look at all of the humanities sequences, and come up with three you’d like to take; sometimes, different sections of your first choice may be filled or incompatible with your schedule, but you’ll need to take one of the sequences anyway, so it’s better to go in with a plan for sequences you like rather than blindly picking a random sequence.</p>
<p>Thanks a bunch. That definitely helped.</p>