<p>Hey everyone,
I was wondering, what do you think some of the easiest classes to get A's in are at the University of Chicago?
My GPA is a tad low, much lower than I aimed for or even expected. </p>
<p>Also, please don't give me any crap about "challenging yourself" or "why did you go to the UofC if you didn't want a challenge." I do want to challenge myself, but there's challenging yourself in good ways, and challenging yourself in stupid ways.
For example, a humanities person who struggled to break 600 on the SAT math taking Honors Calculus.</p>
<p>Hard to say without knowing what year you are in.
It is quite doable to get As in almost all of the core classes here as long as you take the right ones. What have you still got left to do?</p>
<p>-TAPS is super hard to get into, but you can get an A in it once you do in acting fundamentals.
-A in core bio is pretty easy as long as you put in the work
-Same goes for an A in Bio topics
-A in either Chem is the Atom or Natural hazards for phy sci
Also if you have some language experience an A in any 200 series is pretty doable</p>
<p>I’m kind of in the same boat, I’m looking to take Chemistry in the Atmosphere for sure (I took Global Warming as my other one). I hear Pharmacological Perspectives is an easy replacement for Core Bio but i’m not sure if you’ve completed that.</p>
<p>All CS courses are tough (well i’m not sure about intro to the world wide web), don’t be fooled - Salveter will make you work your ass off if you take intro to programming.</p>
<p>If you want to learn absolutely nothing but get an A, take phy-sci! Most worthless classes here.</p>
<p>Alright, fine, maybe CS isn’t strictly easy. However, I’ve found it easier to do well in than my other classes for two main reasons: </p>
<p>1) given how you’ve done in the class so far, you can generally extrapolate out to the end of the quarter and reason about what you need to do to get the grade that you wants, and </p>
<p>2) programs have tangible outputs, so instead of being left in the dark in terms of knowing how you’re doing in a class like you would with test or paper heavy classes, you’ll have a good idea of how many points you’re getting on any specific assignment or project.</p>
<p>This certainly raises an important point: How do we define an easy A? Less work? Greater likelihood?</p>
<p>Rny2: Both, if possible.
Also, how can I make up poor performances in calculus? I hadn’t taken calc before and wish so badly that I did. What if I retook calc 151 and 152?</p>
<p>For Hum, everything besides HBC, Greek, Philosophical Perspectives, and Intro to Hum. For Sosc, everything besides Power, Self, and Classics. I’m not sure about the others.</p>
<p>^ That’s what’s often said, but I found that the professor is the most important factor for Hum, and I’m assuming Sosc. So don’t rule out some of the more classically “UChicago” core classes just because you think they’ll be harder. Evaluations, evaluations! You’ll be surprised at the number of instructors who are amazing and fair graders.</p>
<p>Look at courseevaluations and get a sense of student self-reported hours/week and grade expected.</p>
<p>And don’t be so hard on yourself. Really. Grades are VERY arbitrary; sometimes B-range grades were more meaningful to me and represented more effort and achievement than A-range grades.</p>
<p>heck, my D got A’s in all her courses, including honors O Chem.</p>
<p>Maybe try grad level spanish level courses? The one she took on spanish poetry she found pretty easy - an easy A if you can handle the readings.</p>
<p>I think taking all the hardest, best classes is the best idea. Why else are we at college… It bothers me people are looking for the easiest A. I’m potentially pre-med, but I am doing all in my power to avoid the pre-meds because of this exact mentality. It drives me crazy. Take the hardest classes, get the best grades. That’s my thing.</p>
<p>@uchicagoalumna:
Thanks, that is a good option. I have tried to sign up for the courses I want with profs who have the best evaluations.</p>
<p>@newmassdad:
That’s impressive, words cannot describe my jealousy of your D. I might try some more French, which I’m fairly well versed at if I do say so myself.</p>
<p>@reversepsych:
I provided a disclaimer. Certainly, those of us in college, particularly those at elite ones such as Chicago, are here because we want to be pushed, we want to learn and we thrive in the face of a challenge. However, as stated previously, there are beneficial ways to challenge oneself, and quixotic, even stupid, ways to challenge oneself.
For major classes, I fully intend to take intensive tracks and honors sequences. However, those courses will in and of themselves be very difficult and time consuming. Now, let’s say for the physical sciences requirement, I sign up for Honors Physics or something. That would without question be an extremely difficult class, but, given no interest in physics, weak quantitative background relative to some other Chicago students, and difficult major classes, why exactly would I cut time away from more important classes and induce absolute misery by signing up for such a class?
It shouldn’t bother you that people are looking for the easiest A; who are you to judge? They might have different career goals than you do, or different priorities or other commitments. What’s to say they’re necessarily wrong and you’re necessarily correct? </p>
<p>Pre-meds are an entirely different case altogether. People who want to enter a medical school face less than 3% acceptance rates at some medical schools, which are almost entirely numbers-based. Taking hard classes in unrelated fields would be deleterious to their odds at top med schools.</p>
<p>You make a lot of good points. I think the thing that bothers me is that there are a lot of classes that have fair graders and great professors but people shy away from, like the “harder” core classes, just because they think they won’t get an A. Harsh grading and good criticism is a way to get better at writing, and I feel like my writing didn’t improve this year because of an overly easy Hum professor. I felt like my papers were only marginally better at the end of the year than at the beginning. Sure, I got the “easy” A, and I learned a lot from the texts and discussion, but I didn’t improve my writing very much. I just think there is a lot of benefit to be had from being pushed. I absolutely agree it’s best to focus on what you are interested in, though. Are you going the econ for grad school route? I know that is super tough, so I suppose minimizing the damage in other classes is a good thing to do. </p>
<p>I’m sorry though, I cannot stand up for the pre-meds. I just can’t. They are horrible about this, it’s like the only thing they care about is the grade, they do not have any passion for the knowledge. They complain, and then they complain some more about how much work things are. I know not all pre-meds are like this, but this is my experience from taking a ~200 people class where most of the class was pre-med.</p>
