<p>So, I know that Penn is known for having top-level language department, but what does that say about difficulty?</p>
<p>F. Language is one of my weakest points, and I'm going to be taking Spanish at Penn, I tested into Intermediate Spanish I.</p>
<p>Are classes curved? Are they hard? (specifically for this class?)</p>
<p>I’ve heard (from my cohort Director) that those classes are meant to be GPA boosters. They are not curved and they are relatively easy. I’m not even going to test; I’m just going to take it from 1 to 4 because my schedule will be insane as is.</p>
<p>taking the classes 1 to 4… won’t that screw up the credits you’ll need later on?</p>
<p>Like starting off with level 3, in my case…doesn’t that give one some sort of advantage?</p>
<p>Cause if not, I’m going to cancel my score report to UPenn, lol. I wan’t to start off easy again…</p>
<p>well, I got a decent amount of AP credits and I am a JWS so it makes sense for me to take some relaxed courses and to hedge my gpa from the inevitable ownage I’m entitled to =)</p>
<p>Foreign language at Penn is pretty exceptional. I hated languages before I got to Penn, and now I’m going to Germany for a course and planning at least a German minor if not major. I’ll also be taking some other language courses before I graduate.</p>
<p>If you test into a higher level language course, please take that course. Unless I’m mistaken, basically all of the language departments use an absolute point scale with traditional values for letter grades. They’re not necessarily GPA boosters, but for the most part if you study and learn the vocabulary, you’ll get at least a B+.</p>
<p>Don’t be the jerk who is clearly meant to be in SPAN140 and is taking SPAN120 for the easy A. That hurts your classmates since you will already know all of the answers and it hurts you since it allows you to become complacent. If you’ve had any Spanish experience, you have to have VERY little knowledge to place into 110 anyway.</p>