I’m planning on going to law school or grad school. Obviously I have to fulfill my major’s requirements as well as distribution requirements, but would grad/law schools care what actual courses I take to fulfill those requirements? For example, I have to take a required writing seminar this fall. But there’s a lot of different options to fulfill that, like there’s traditional classic literature courses but there are also some pretty unique ones like analyzing the appeal of reality television, or learning about the representation of minorities in pop culture.
I want to take one of those unique courses to fulfill my writing requirement, but I’m wondering if grad/law schools would look down upon that? Is it okay to take fun courses like that throughout college if they’re available and work with my requirements/schedule, or should I pick more traditionally academic courses? Thank you 
http://lawschoolnumbers.com/application-prep/making-undergraduate-courses-count-for-law-school has some suggestions for law school prep.
For PhD programs, what you take in your major and other subjects relevant to your PhD major matters.
For medical school, you may have to be sure that those writing and other specified courses are accepted as such by medical schools.
Grad and professional schools will not look kindly on bird classes, even as electives.
I’m an undergrad, so feel free to take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I think that they don’t necessarily care about the types of electives you take (and almost certainly wouldn’t care about your writing seminar topic), but it’s good to take courses that will be useful to potential employers/internships/grad schools later on. I don’t think this matters as much your freshman year, since I’m a big proponent of taking classes in a variety of fields early on, but as you get to more specialized classes, it’s good to take ones that will give you skills you can use to market yourself down the road.
For example, I include “relevant coursework” on my resume now, and when I was applying to internships this year, my overall major didn’t necessarily have anything to do with them, but I could point to specific classes I had taken that gave me the necessary knowledge and skill set. One potential employer actually quizzed me on the topic of one of my classes, so having that prior knowledge was necessary.
That was a rather long-winded response, but to summarize my viewpoint: yes it’s totally fine to take fun classes, but balance them with a few courses that will be applicable to what you want to do in the future (once you actually figure that out).
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hmm… you go to college to expand your brain and learnings. why not take some course for ‘yourself’ and to learn something new and different?
Many colleges have “pre law” clubs or concentrations, and these can be very helpful in selecting classes. Those writing courses with exciting titles lure you in with interesting topics but still teach writing. But it’s writing about a subject you enjoy.
Taking a couple of classes like “Constitutional Law” (history or political science department), “Media Law” (communication department") or “Criminal Law” (sociology or criminal studies department) might help you decide if law school is right for you.
@ucbalumnus Thank you so much for that link! I really appreciate it. I just read through it and it was really helpful.
@TomSrOfBoston Oh, okay. I knew they would obviously care about the classes I take for my major/more academic ones, but I wasn’t sure if they would care what electives I took. Thank you.
@Ranza123 Thanks for your reply! So you think it should be okay to take more “fun/unique” courses as electives?
@MorgranLovesMeow That’s what I was thinking!
@stradmom Thank you for your advice
Absolutely! I think that early on you should take courses in every field that interests you if you have the time. Some of the courses I took for fun have no real use other than just being interesting/maybe filling a requirement, like astronomy, while some turned out to be super interesting and turned into a minor/future career, like policy. You just never know, so I think you should start off by taking whatever sounds interesting.
Absolutely some classes that you also think will be interesting or fulfilling to you as a person. Those have often been the ones where I have learned the most and have had the most applications to me outside of the classroom.
OP is talking about a first semester of college course choice intended to be both fun and offer writing enhancement.
No post grad program will look down on this. And through college, as long as you end up with the proper balance (depth and breadth) to graduate- and the prep for your next step- you’re fine. The whole point in offering electives is that they’re, well, electives, not part of a required sequence or level.
I’m not the expert on law school, but I don’t think they usually have pre-requisites. People go for a variety of reasons and your undergrad major doesn’t really matter, but the GPA is important and LSAT scores are the big thing.
As for “grad school” the answer is it depends on the program. Generally, they don’t really care about the specific classes. The most important things are GRE/GMAT/etc test scores, GPA, essays, and any relevant research/work experience.
Mandalorian, grad school cares very much about the classes. They need to see you are properly prepared for the focus of grad school. You don’t go off to to study X or Y without the proper basis. Nor can you adequately define your research interests.
But no one begrudges an interesting elective, now and then.
@lookingforward- It very much depends on the specific program as I said before. “Grad school” is such a general broad term it’s hard to give a definitive answer. As for “the proper basis” this is quite ambiguous as well. A graduate degree does not necessarily have to be in the same field or even a related field as an undergraduate.
If you go to grad school for something you closely studied in undergrad, yes, the courses you take can help you very much.
My own example: I applied for and got a position normally only PhD students are eligible for because I took so many relevant courses during undergrad that the faculty felt I have enough experience. I’ve also been re-reading things in grad school that I read in undergrad, can talk about things others are talking about because I learned about it in undergrad, etc.
My undergraduate experience and the actual courses I took have definitely helped me. So, it could help you, too, if you study the same field as closely in both degrees. But this is hard because you don’t always know exactly what you want to study early on in college.