<p>How exactly do we make a Brown.edu id after committing to brown?</p>
<p>It takes a while to get there. Don’t worry, they’ll send you an email with instructions to set up your myAccount and Brown email at some point during the summer.</p>
<p>@keynesian: We have about 6000 undergraduates here. There are some huge lecture classes, such as Econ 11 (Principles of Economics) and Neuro 1 (Intro to Neuro), but the majority of your classes will be much smaller. I’ve had one big lecture course in each semester here, and my other six classes have been much, much smaller. Even in the mid-size classes (which is what I use to classify a 25-50 person class), there is a lot more interaction than I expected. Besides, professors always have office hours, and are always willing to make additional appointments if you want to. In a nutshell: I’ve never had an issue making contact with faculty, and I even managed to procure a research position with a faculty member I haven’t taken a class with simply by going to his regular office hours and talking to him :)</p>
<p>@Bedford,</p>
<p>I had friends with siblings at Brown. Doesn’t really seem to make a difference. I was in a frat so it made a difference there because we obviously went after the younger siblings. The only real difference I saw was that if the older sibling had a car it meant the younger one would have access to it (so if you’re younger, you might be a freshman with car access, which would be rare). I could see that being a nice perk.</p>
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<p>Doesn’t the Math-Computer Science concentration BSc require 18 courses? How do you fit it in with a classics concentration, if one normally takes 4 classes per semester? You’d only have 32 class selections available over 4 years. Do you take virtually nothing else outside your concentrations? Do students often take 5 classes at one time?</p>
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Math-CS technically requires 20 courses. But…</p>
<p>When I declared, one could take CS 19 and not need another advanced CS course. My writing requirement was satisfied by a classics course. I was able to get MATH0350 waived by demonstrating an understanding of the material in another class, and I got out of MATH0090 and 0100 by my AP scores, so I only needed 15 courses. For classics, I had 3 semesters of Greek in terms of placement, and my advisor waived 2 terms of history due to the intensity of my language classes, leaving 11 requirements. I therefore need 26 courses (doable with a standard courseload). By the end of this term, I will have completed 22 requirements and had 7 electives, which is certainly reasonable.</p>
<p>This is the 5th term in which I have taken 5 courses; I will graduate with 37 credits, unless I fail something (I’m reducing my courseload next year to the standard in order to finally have a social life, to apply to jobs and grad schools, and to work more fully on my research). Although 4 of those 8 courses will not be requirements, they will be classics courses, as this is my likely field of study for graduate school.</p>
<p>5 courses a semester is not incredibly uncommon, though if I had to guess, a good portion of the students who take 5 courses have music performance as the 5th credit, which is somewhat different.</p>
<p>So…such options are available to those who are willing to take on a large amount of schoolwork, but should be seen as the exception and not the norm.</p>
<p>Which meal plan should we go on? All freshmen are put on the 20 meals per week by default. Did you find this was enough/too little/too much?</p>
<p>Does it really cost $6.15 per meal for Meal Plans? According to the Dining website, 1 Flexplus Point=1 dollar. So for Flex 460, the annual charge($4158) minus FlexPlus Points (500) = $3658. then divide into 460 meals will be $7.9 per meal? um…I believe I must have misinterpret something… Can anyone please point it out?</p>
<p>“A meal’s value is a non-refundable $6.15. Pay any remaining balance with Flex Points or cash. Use up to 2 meal credits each day.” What’s ‘Use up to 2 meal credits each day’ ?</p>
<p>Which meal plan you should go on depends on your eating habits. The flex plans offer more flexibility but fewer meals (if you convert everything to points or to meals). I find myself eating 16-17 meals a week, meaning 20 is appropriate. I can buy juice with the remaining credits if I want. Some people prefer 14/week. The first year, it’s probably better to err on the side of caution and reduce your plan later.</p>
<p>@ChenChenChen: If you use points, you may spend 6.15 points (not dollars) to get a meal. At the snack places like the Gate and Jo’s, a meal credit will be worth 6.15 points. However, if you want to buy a meal at the VW or the Ratty with cash, the cost is substantially more (I don’t have numbers on me, but it’s over $30 for 3 meals). The meal plans don’t work out to be $6.15/meal + points. In fact, you’ll find that anything other than flex460 and 20 meals a week costs you more per meal than those two options.</p>
<p>At eateries other than the VW or Ratty, you can generally pay using cash, points, meal credits, or declining balance (not going to get into that option). You are allowed to use a maximum of 2 meal credits each day at there eateries; when you do this, the meal credit is worth the equivalent of 6.15 points. Anything else you buy must be done using another payment option. I don’t know if this 2 credit limit is actually enforced, but it’s definitely a Dining Services policy, as the nice signs at Jo’s now remind us.</p>
<p>search meal plan and select brown forum. discussed every year. fyi I used 8 credits one day, it can be done.</p>
<p>LoremIpsum, my son (currently a junior) has taken five courses every semester, I’m pretty sure, but at least one has always been S/NC (or audited). In general, he’s made excellent use of S/NC, especially for exploring totally new content areas (Intro Geology) or taking a stretch course in an area he loves, but that is far from his concentration (Physics 7).</p>
<p>wolfmanjack, while normally I would agree, the meal plan has changed a lot in the last few years and I don’t know how up to date the CC threads are.</p>
<p>Even I am a little out of touch since it’s almost 2 years since I graduated. I usually ate 3 meals a day (rare) and therefore the 20 meal plan was ideal. I switched to flex 460 for junior/senior year because my schedule changed a lot and I started eating breakfast less/later, and felt that more flex points would be better for me. I ran out of credits/points on multiple occasions, and in my final 2 years, was the only person I, or any of my friends knew who had done that. I was a varsity athlete and therefore ate a lot. Most other athletes I imagine are on 20 meal because the VW and Ratty offer so much more food for your swipe than Jo’s or the Gate. Therefore, the average student finds flex 460 plenty unless you usually eat 3 meals a day. </p>
<p>I would definitely not drop below one of those until sophomore year or later as meal time is a very social time. (made this a separate paragraph for emphasis)</p>
<p>As Uroogla correctly points out, not all meal credits are created equal. The Ratty and VW meals are worth more, but deduct only one credit. At Jo’s and the Gate, a credit is worth $6.15 (up from 5.45 when I was senior). The 2 credit rule is loosely enforced such that it comes out to 2 credits per trip to the register (at least when I was there). Such that if your total is more than 12.30, you will have to use points. If your total is between 6.15 and 12.30, you will have to choose whether you want to use 2 credits or credit and points, or (in my case) figure out before you get to the register what your meal costs and find items to bring you up to 2 credits or drop items to go below 1.</p>
<p>From a bang for your buck standpoint, the bigger plans are always better, but if you legitimately won’t use it, then it’s not necessarily worth it.</p>
<p>Uroogla, thanks for your continuing help and insights, both for me and for the many others who have questions.</p>
<p>Bedford, I like the idea of adding a fifth class as an audit or S/NC – it gives a student the chance to explore more areas without losing focus on his primary subjects. Is it hard to get 5th class approval, especially for auditing?</p>
<p>^There is no need to seek approval for a fifth class – any courseload between three and five courses is allowed, although to stay in good standing you need five-credit semesters to make up for any three-credit semesters. Audits require approval of the instructor, which (in my experience) is usually not that hard to get.</p>
<p>@ Uroogla: how many semesters of Latin did you get in terms of placement? Does the Classics department look at SAT II scores?</p>
<p>The Classics department doesn’t look at SATII scores - I received 4 semesters of placement (the most anyone can receive). Students who have read at 100-150 lines a week for 1-2 years are ready for this placement. Less may be acceptable; you’ll want to talk to someone in the department (probably Professor Pucci) for your specific case.</p>
<p>I’m an international student, so I’ll be going to the International Orientation on 31st Aug, but I’m pretty interested in the Third World Transition Program and the UCAAP Pre-Orientation programs. </p>
<p>Can anyone tell me what these two programs are like? Actually, is it even possible for an international student to do two Pre-Orientation programs at the same time?</p>
<p>hi keynesian, i’m international too. i remember reading something abt that. last year TWTP and international orientation overlapped one day, so TWTP suggested international student go to the first day of international orientation instead of the last day of TWTP, which were on the same day, since int’l orientation’s quite important. but this year…seems like everything’s on the say day!!!</p>
<p>International transfer student here!</p>
<p>I saw that a few of you were cogsci concentrators (there’s a nerdy brain joke in there somewhere). I’m transferring from a school where I did mostly linguistics classes, but I feel like I might be more inclined towards seeing language from a cogsci perspective. How much do linguistics and CogSci overlap? It seems like the CogSci DUG (from the posts below) is quite inactive, while the ling one is somewhat alive. with CLPS, are they merging? Does it even make sense to do a double concentration (if i can even pull it off) with cogsci/ling? What about CS and Ling/CogSci? Any future computational linguists attempting this combination?</p>
<p>WOW, that’s a lot of questions.</p>
<p>Also, on a different note, does Brown have grants/simply dish out money if say there’s a programme outside of school that I really want to go for? Say this year there’s the Linguistics Institute at Colorado Boulder, if I wanted to go for that, can I get some kind of grant for it or any other enrichment programme (I guess, if I can prove that it has academic value)?</p>
<p>p.s. you guys are amazing. just saying.</p>
<p>If linguistics is your thing, you might not like comp. linguistics. In most tasks, they essentially disregard linguistic theory, as it apparently yields poorer results than using an agnostic approach.</p>