<p>I'm a highschool junior who's been taking Russian language for six years now, and I would really like to continue doing so in college. I'm a bit worried that Harvey Mudd (which is #1 on my list) doesn't offer foreign languages, but am glad to see that there is a Russian department at Pomona.</p>
<p>So here are my questions: how hard is it for Mudders to cross-register at other Claremont colleges, especially for foreign languages? Any restrictions? Has anyone actually done this before??</p>
<p>You could do it for sure if it was your area of concentration in the humanities (maybe along with a couple of Russion studies classes). You might not be able to take a class first semester, though – I think you have to take all Mudd core stuff that semester (and you wouldn’t be sorry you did, it is a P/F semester and a good time to get some of those classes taken care of when you don’t have to worry about your grade).</p>
<p>Thanks for your reply, intparent, that’s very reassuring. Are there some kind of scheduling problems for taking languages?
Also, do they require you to take some portion of your humanities on campus? Cause I remember reading about it somewhere but don’t recall exactly…</p>
<p>Yes, you do have to take some of your humanities classes from the HSA department at Mudd. I think the Russian classes are offered at Pomona. I suppose there could be a conflict if there is a required class you have to take at the same time – but here is some info from the Mudd website:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Mudd students are required to do a secondary non-STEM concentration of at least four courses in one area, and one of the approved concentrations is “foreign language” where you can study a foreign language for that concentration. </p>
<p>I did just look at the Pomona offerings, and essentially they have Elementary Russian, Intermediate Russian, Advanced Russian, and a conversation class, plus a variety of other Russian-related courses. I can see how that study might be correct, it would be hard to fit a 4-5 day/week class into the Mudd core in the first couple, or even 3 semesters. Probably easier after that. I suspect another language that had more sections offered (like Spanish might) could be easier to fit in. If you are pretty fluent, another option might be to take the conversation course, which sounds more flexible.</p>
<p>If this is really important to you, you might consider a larger university that has more sections of all courses offered (eg, a school like Berkeley might have a lot more sections of both required classes and Russian offered).</p>
<p>Non-STEM concentration sounds great to me, and it’s actually what attracts me to HMC. </p>
<p>I took a look at Pomona’s offerings, which seem all very diverse and exciting to me (probably because my highschool doesn’t offer much choices and I’m honestly pretty surprised to see that there can be so many different courses in Russian) xD</p>
<p>Yes, I am looking at Berkeley and I think it’s a great school to go to. However, their class size (some >300?) daunts me, and Mudd just seems like a perfect mix of small classes and diverse choices.</p>
<p>If I understand correctly, I’ll have more time to do Russian in my junior/senior year, right? Do they require you to do some of your non-STEM concentration in the first few semesters, or you are free to take other humanities?</p>
<p>Oh I have so many questions >.< Mudd just appears as my perfect fit and I really. really. really wanna go…</p>
<p>Here is what I would say about this. Mudd does have a strong commitment to making sure their graduates have a concentration in something besides STEM. But first and foremost they are about you having a solid STEM education, and to that end they push you hard through the core in the first few semester. There are some rules like that you must take a core class the first time it is offered during your time at Mudd (and if you fail it, I think maybe you must take it as soon as it is offered again? but I would have to check that one…so far hasn’t happened for my kid, knock on wood). There are at least a couple of required HSA courses that are part of the core, and I think you also typically take those freshman year. There is an intro writing class, and this semester my kid has some kind of social studies class. For each of them there were a few choices to pick from that met the HSA requirement.</p>
<p>My D who is a freshman loves literature and studio art – and honestly has barely given them a thought this year (has not taken a class on the other campuses yet). She is just working flat out to keep up in her core classes. But she is okay with this, she knows once she gets through core things will open up. And she finds a lot of core to be very interesting anyway. I was kind of worried about this when she got there. While she has liked math and science, she is interested in a lot of things, and I wasn’t sure she would be happy with the STEM-heavy schedule of the first few semesters. But she seems happy as a clam…</p>
<p>Of course Mudd is a very difficult admit (I think I read 13% this year)? So you will need to make sure you have some more good schools in mind. </p>
<p>Okay, so the way that HSA classes work at Mudd are as follows~</p>
<p>It is not required to take classes in your concentration in the first few semesters, but it will be difficult to fit it into your schedule. Even more so because a lot of the Core classes are in the morning, which will conflict with most of the language classes on Pomona. It might be possible on your third semester, but even if you don’t take one, you can still be on track with your concentration. Though I do know of one freshman taking a Russian language class right now, so it is not entirely impossible. You will have plenty of time to take them your junior/senior year, but you will still have to take classes outside of your concentration, as well as HSA classes on-campus. But I don’t really see that as much of an obstacle. </p>
<p>Overall, if that’s the only issue you have with Mudd, then I think you will be fine. Most freshmen do not take any HSA outside of the writing intensive requirements their first year. In your sophomore year, you can start taking classes inside or outside of your concentration (not a big deal because you only need four classes to complete your concentration). </p>
<p>Hey there! I think I’m that freshman mentioned above. I’ve been taking elementary russian classes for two semesters already, so it’s not impossible to take foreign language as a freshman. Not to mention that I didn’t pass out of any core classes, but I still managed to fit in the russian class in my schedule. So here’s the deal.</p>
<p>My first semester I had to take 8am classes to fit in russian (otherwise my morning would’ve started at 9am), so that wasn’t really the problem. Second semester, russian class conflicted with physics lectures on Tue/Thr (language classes happen basically every morning), but the way I worked it around was to go to class only on Mon/Wed/Fri, and study on my own the materials covered on Tue/Thr. If I missed a quiz or had any question, I would go to the office hour. I could’ve done this because I did well enough on the first semester, I guess.
And because there aren’t usually new people coming into intermediate or advanced classes, we all decided to fit schedule that works for everybody next year for intermediate class and discussed with professor to change the class time. But since you’ve already taken 6 years of russian, that wouldn’t really matter.</p>
<p>So, it’s not entirely impossible to take language classes as a freshmen. You just gotta be willing to take 8am morning classes, diligent enough to get to pomona every morning (it’s quite a distance), and give up other cool tech electives offered at Mudd. But if you like learning languages, I guess it’s worth. If you can pass out of Physics 24 (mechanics), it’s way much easier to work your schedule around. I know a freshman friend who’s been taking German this year, but he passed out of physics so he didn’t have to go through the conflict issue I had to deal with.</p>
<p>I hope that helped! Thanks to my Scripps friend, also a russian language student, who guided me here.</p>