<p>I know many people have asked about focus in the past, so do u guys have any links to threads about the focus program?</p>
<p>Do the focus topics change from year to year? and if you were in focus, how did ur schedule fit together (in terms of the focus classes and electives)</p>
<p>thanks!</p>
<p>i would like to know more about the focus program too. can anybody share?</p>
<p>I was in the "Athens in the Golden Age" FOCUS last year, which will probably be offered this fall (it alternates with the Medieval FOCUS). I took organic chem as my elective; it took time management, but it wasn't too bad. </p>
<p>Topics do change from year to year, but a few seem to be the same (Global Americas, Forging Social Ideals, Evolution, Visions of Freedom, Genome Revolution).</p>
<p><a href="http://focus.aas.duke.edu/program/%5B/url%5D">http://focus.aas.duke.edu/program/</a></p>
<p>do u think taking the evolution focus would be a good idea if i wanted to major in something like evolutionary biology or biological anthropology?</p>
<p>do most freshman have the chance of participating in FOCUS? is admission selective?</p>
<p>can get in a focus is you want to do one. it's not worth it though. A LOT more work than regular classes plus you are limited in course selection. It was a waste of a semester for me.</p>
<p>The above post is misleading; the difficulty of a FOCUS depends on which cluster you're in, as well as the classes you take within that cluster. Mine (Visions of Freedom) wasn't bad, but I've heard plenty of complaints about others. If you email the people in charge of FOCUS she can usually put you in contact with past students from the clusters you're interested in. That's really the best way to find out what a specific FOCUS is like.</p>
<p>pros: a tight community of students/professors
an intellectually stimulating experience
a possible trip to overseas
cons: a lot more work</p>
<p>pros: professors who meet with you for discussions sometimes for meals or even in your own dorm meeting room or out in the field and the team faculty approach can be a very rewarding experience, professors who sometimes invite students to do some research with them (experience of our tour guide), FOCUS students are placed together in the same dorm on East (One FOCUS subject per building or so) but never with a roommate who is FOCUS..which leads to lots of friendships from class carrying over into freshman dorm life but still gives you a chance to live with a non FOCUS student, too. Sometimes very senior and experienced faculty are teaching FOCUS freshman--exciting.
In MHO, the writing requirement is a challenge no matter where you end up taking it..it is time consuming and taking it in context with an interdisciplinary semester of related lectures and discussions can make writing class more meaningful and rewarding. FOCUS has a way of making Duke seem more like a Liberal Arts College for a semester. Freshman courses that are introductory in most disciplines can be large in size and less personal until you get deeper into your major and your electives will be more intimate and smaller. FOCUS gets you into intimate class size immediately.
cons: feedback on FOCUS tends to vary from subject to subject but if you are in the mood to knock off three of your TReqs, FOCUS can be a very creative immersion into one subject looked at from three disciplines.</p>