<p>Does anyone know anything about the Isabelle Scott Bollard scholarship? I was contacted earlier about it by an alum, but a google search doesn’t really turn up anything.</p>
<p>Hahahahahahaa, nice point Haitian ;)</p>
<p>Oh and my next best choice was Amherst. I was tossing up between Amherst and Brown for a long time. I also considered Dartmouth and Middlebury for a little bit, but I didn’t get too good of a feel from what I had read.</p>
<p>So I had a question:</p>
<p>How does class shopping work, and yet classes are still small? Because wouldn’t there just be fairly large classes with all the good professors/subjects, and then teeny-tiny small classes with the bad professors/subjects? How does Brown manage to keep class size down but still allow students to pick their classes?</p>
<p>Or do they just cheat and use average size, smashing the fairly large with the teeny-tiny and coming up with “average class under 20” (or whatever they say, that’s a made up quote lol)</p>
<p>^Some courses are large. I’m a TA for a course of 150 students. It’s not the largest course in my department. Brown had to cap a course last year when >600 students signed up (the largest classroom can’t hold that many students). On the other hand, Brown caps many courses to a certain number of students. Additionally, upper level classes seldom have many people in them (it’s generally lower level lecture classes and a couple unique upper level classes like abnormal psych). I’ve never been in a math class over 30 students, for example. I’ve had an “intro” (no prereqs) applied math class of 160, but the next semester had about 10. I doubt teacher quality has as much of an effect on enrollment as you suggest. The single worst professor I ever had might have reduced enrollment by 10 in a class of ~85. Often, students want or need to take a course regardless of professor, or scheduling gets in the way. I personally may complain about some professors, but I would never let that get in the way of taking a course I want or need. But then, I don’t shop classes. I have ~30 requirements, so there’s little point.</p>
<p>I think the number of classes with multiple sections is actually pretty small.</p>
<p>Also, there is a reason brown places a tiny amount of weight on what your academic interests are such that they don’t end up with a student body that wants the same classes.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure we have about an equivalent distribution of large to small classes as most peer schools. The largest classes here, though, tend to be classes where either the content is great and it’s not really run by the professor (the CS department works largely in this way, where TAs take over teaching a good portion of the content), or where the professor can tell a compelling story with the material (such as Morone’s City Politics, or the class that had to be capped, Great Powers and Empire). Shopping period, though, gives you the opportunity to find the classes where you have a connection to the material and lectures: few people even thought about taking Early Modern Poland, but it was a class where the material interested me, and the professor was charismatic and compelling, so I was in an amazing class (for me) with only 7 other students, most of whom weren’t history concentrators.</p>
<p>I’d argue that the professor contributes directly to the enrolment in a few cases – what about Hazeltine or Neumann?</p>
<p>can you give me a few ideas of what i can do at nights here?</p>
<p>ive been here already for a few days for the summer program, and i can’t really find anything to do. my roommate sits in his room all day, and on the first day i made the mistake of not introducing myself to a lot of people, so i haven’t really made a ton of friends and can’t do anything with my roommate because he’s a hermit.</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>I am assuming you are in high school? Do you have a fake? If not, there is the mall, there are outdoor movies downtown (I forget exactly where). I forget which clubs are 18+, check out riatnight.com but make sure to call places, that site didn’t update regularly.</p>
<p>Just start introducing yourself now.</p>
<p>i actually just graduated HS and im eighteen. it might seem odd, but the reason i came here is so i could see what the campus is like and try to transfer after my first year of college. yeah i am definitely going to start being more aggressive socially, its just getting kind of hard because everyone pretty much has made their groups already, or atleast has their roommate to hang out with, and im pretty much left out lol. its seriously depressing</p>
<p>thanks btw</p>
<p>I was wondering how grading develops in the large Philosophy survey courses (e.g., ancient philosophy). I read somewhere that you write 3-4 papers that are read/graded by TA’s. There seems to be some unavoidable subjectivity here as your papers may be read/graded by different TA’s who have different expectations with respect to what is A quality work, B quality work, etc. It would make sense to go s/nc in the large survey courses but for a grade in smaller classes where the professor gets a better sense of you and your performance in the course. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>To generalize, what do the students say about grading, especially in the Liberal Arts side of the University. A friend of mine attending Northwestern said about Northwestern “hard to make A’s and hard to make C’s.” Any axiom for Brown?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>You are right that in courses such as Ancient Philosophy, your papers will be graded by TAs. More accurately, your papers will be graded by the person who leads your section discussion. For many of these classes (at least in Philosophy), the professor him/herself will lead at least one section. So, if you feel more secure having your papers graded by a professor, you could choose to attend the section led by him/her. As a matter of fact, when I took Ancient Philosophy last year, the professor explicitly encouraged freshmen to go for the section led by herself. The same professor will be teaching the class this fall.</p>
<p>In any case, I’ve had nothing but great experiences with the Philosophy grad students serving as TAs for my classes. If you find yourself with a not-so-great grade for your first paper, drop by the office hours of your section leader and have him/her walk you through the paper. Good philosophical writing takes practice, and you will eventually get better at it. Also, your TA will know you by name within the first couple of weeks, and your papers will always be graded by the same person. So, improvements in your writing will most likely be noted.</p>
<p>Also, I wouldn’t consider Ancient Philosophy to be a large class. There are only 31 people pre-registered for it so far, and last year the total enrollment was 50-ish. Split that into 4 separate sections and each one is actually quite small. In fact, the only Philosophy class that can unequivocally be considered “big” is Existentialism.</p>
<p>Any theatre majors that could share any experiiences they’ve had in the program?</p>
<p>@perfect36: Colosseum is 18+ on Wednesday nights (and free if you go before 10:30). If you have a fake, you could go to Spats and any other club downtown. Lupo’s and the Met (in Pawtucket) have concerts, maybe you’ll find a band that you like performing there over the summer. If you feel like just kicking back with a movie, go down to the mall, or to Avon if you want a cuter experience.</p>
<p>Freekick,</p>
<p>In most classes I would say the same grading thing is true of brown. In most science classes I took I would say it wasn’t that hard to get a c though so def put in the work.</p>
<p>General idea about grading at Brown: Lots of As, not many Cs. Clearly not true of all classes, but in many, it’s tough to get a C, and a non-negligible number of courses end with all students getting As. Which is not to say it’s easy to get a 4.0 (pretending for a moment that Brown computed GPA). I know exactly 1 person with a 4.0 (and they didn’t get into Phi Beta Kappa with people with lower GPAs, for what it’s worth).</p>
<p>Also, FWIW, there is a “distribution requirement” for Phi Beta Kappa. 40% of your classes have to be in the humanities, social sciences or pure math.</p>
<p>All students getting A’s? I wasn’t in the sciences and never saw that happen in any of the departments I took courses in. Shame on me for choosing wrong :)</p>
<p>Some CS classes are like that, as are (as far as I can tell) a few math courses. Certainly some humanities courses are like that (though in at least one such class I was in, the class was simply superb compared to a normal class at that level and it was deserved) too.</p>
<p>thanks for the feedback.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Given that I have never taken a Philosophy course before, would Ancient (Gill) or Early Modern (Larmore) be a best first choice to take (e.g., complexity of material, breadth of material covered, material lends itself to more readily develop the philosophical mindset with respect to critically reading and writing)?</p></li>
<li><p>What would be your guess with respect to what percentage of students pursue the requirements to graduate with honors in one of their concentrations?</p></li>
</ol>