Courses for this fall

<p>would taking 3 courses and 1 PE be manageable? I know the norm is 3 courses per term, but PE wouldn't be that hard, would it?</p>

<p>you would choose your own pe at anytime you want to take it (as long as you get 3 in before graduation and there is no grade for PE)</p>

<p>Absolutely not. Nearly everyone, athletes and all, takes three classes in the first term at Dartmouth. You can take 2, but I think you'll find yourself pretty bored if you do so.</p>

<p>hmm... what's everyone thinking they want to take...</p>

<p>My goal was to take 3 things I haven't taken in high school yet..earth science for sure, then maybe economics? Anthropology?</p>

<p>I wonder what the offerings for the first year writing thing will be</p>

<p>D has taken 3 classes plus PE twice now, it works, and her PE was skiing, so she had bus time, etc as well. If you have work-study, remember to factor that in as well.
I would say, though, freshman fall is a time to pace yourself, and go a little easier. You have many adjustments during that period.</p>

<p>taking three classes is the norm because it's not too hard. No matter what classes you take, chances are they'll be intro-ish level and not that much work.</p>

<p>Last year, all three terms I took three classes (including at least one lab) as well as at least one PE. It wasn't that bad at all. Don't worry about it. PE is always worth it, b/c they're free or almost free, and even if you don't end up with credit they're a lot of fun, you meet new people, and you improve on a skill or learn a new one.</p>

<p>everyone generally takes 3 courses their first term. the only reason you probably wouldn't is if you signed up for three but did really poorly and withdrew from one. as for pe classes, they all have different time commitments, and you can easily work them into your schedule. for example, my last pe class only met once a week for two hours.</p>

<p>Yeah, 3 courses + PE is not going to be a problem, unless you're taking really time-consuming courses. I took four courses + PE my freshman fall (one of those being instrumental music lessons) and did fine.</p>

<p>That said, I'd strongly recommend against taking any pre-med courses like chem 5 unless you're pretty sure you want to be pre-med, and especially for your first term on campus. They're pretty much painful weed-out courses, though math 3/8/11 isn't quite as bad.</p>

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one of those being instrumental music lessons

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<p>I've been trying to find those on OCR, but the only thing they seem to have is basic keyboard. Which other instruments do they teach? I taught myself how to play the guitar, and, after 2 years, it'd be nice to have a professional teach me stuff like theory.</p>

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it'd be nice to have a professional teach me stuff like theory.

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<p>Oh my gawd, don't take Music Theory. It was the most boring and useless thing I have ever studied (I took about 3 years worth of it).</p>

<p>Yeah, but most subjects get boring once you've studied them for three years. I loved science four years ago. I've only had courses in the sciences at my school since then. Now i can't stand it (though i'll still probably major in a science). </p>

<p>And i've learned basic theory (ie chord construction, scales etc) off the net, and its pretty interesting. More maths and less technique than what guitar playing usually involves. I can see myself studying it for a semester.</p>

<p>I did stuff in Harmony and my goodness, it had to be the most boring thing I had ever touched in HS. It was just so...straightforward. Obviously, this is just my PoV.</p>

<p>Science was for the most part, fairly interesting. I usually find the most rigorous subjects (Mathematics and Physics) extremely interesting, despite the fact that I've taken these for about 4 years each and they never get boring. The AP curriculum was without a doubt, trivial. But the fun stuff starts when you get to the more abstract stages of Math and whatnot, so you are forced to actually think about your problems. You could probably find some fun stuff with research.</p>

<p>Then there's Econ. That's not rigorous at all, but at least it's interesting. And you can make a lot of money from it.</p>

<p>I am thinking of Computer Science 5 , a Math course and writing 2 or 5. </p>

<p>I have heard( probably on CC ) that Econ 1 should be avoided in fall , because its a weed-out course. Is this true ?</p>

<p>I would suggest looking at the median grade information for Econ 1 for the fall terms</p>

<p><a href="http://www.dartmouth.edu/%7Ereg/courses/medians/index.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.dartmouth.edu/~reg/courses/medians/index.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>In fall 2006 there were 5 sections of Econ 1. In 2 sections (1 & 2) the median grade was B and in the other 3 classes (3-5)the median grade was B+.</p>

<p>IN the winter 2007 term, there were 5 econ classes in 4 sections the median grade was B the 5th class the median grade was b+/b.</p>

<p>This means yes, there could have been a lot of B-'s, C+'s or C's given.</p>

<p>I'm thinking the same thing supergaut. I'm trying to figure out which classes are actual weeders, and that recent CS Department mailing kind of caught my interest. Econ in the fall doesn't sound too bad though.</p>

<p>Yeah, I checked out econ in on the ORC site. There doesn't seem to be too much of a difference between the fall and winter courses in terms of both size and median grade. </p>

<p>But I have never studied econ. before so I don't want to take chances with a potential weeder class. </p>

<p>Yeah, big brother, the CS mailing was intersting. Well , CS is interesting and you can make money out of it too ;).</p>

<p>I'm taking Computer Science 4 now and it's really interesting. Hany Farid is a great prof -- try to take something with him if you can.</p>