<p>I am looking into majoring in 2 out of 3 of these departments.</p>
<p>Can anyone who has firsthand information about Smith provide me with information on these departments?</p>
<p>I am very interested in Smith.</p>
<p>My daughter is a sophmore and a French major. She loves the classes she's had at Smith. She took a French class last semester at Amherst last semester and loved it as well. She's planning on spending her junior year in Paris, where Smith has a well-established program. So, I think she would tell you if you're interested in French as a major, it's a great place.</p>
<p>Well, dance is a five-college department - in order to major, you will have to take at least one class off-campus at some point. However, the dance department does put out a list of "travel packages" to make the commute easier. <a href="http://www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/dance/news/detail.php?contentID=1948%5B/url%5D">http://www.fivecolleges.edu/sites/dance/news/detail.php?contentID=1948</a></p>
<p>My personal experience with the dance department is limited to ballet classes.</p>
<p>My friend is a biology major and she also studies French and is abroad in Geneva this semester. They're both great departments, though biology is known for being quite tough. </p>
<p>The French department has generally good professors (I also took some french courses, so my experience in that is first hand), but it tends to be heavily oriented towards getting people to go abroad to Paris (Geneva is also a French speaking program, but they dept. profs seem to push Paris more), which may not neccessarily be a goal of yours. The other thing to keep in mind with French is that if you haven't studied it yet, you have to take a full year of beginner's french in order to get credit for either semester's work. If you have taken the courses in high school, you'll take a placement test when you arrive and they'll put you into a particular level.</p>
<p>Where is TheDad? I know his daughter is a serious dancer as well as a scholar.</p>
<p>Smith is a recognized (and funded) national center for genomics research (under the leadership of Steve Williams), and large part of the research is undertaken with participation of undergraduates, often STRIDE scholars, who are paid for their work (and sometimes co-publish papers).</p>
<p>The dance program I'm told builds on the strength of the five-college program:</p>
<p><a href="http://www.smith.edu/dance/major.php%5B/url%5D">http://www.smith.edu/dance/major.php</a></p>
<p>Smith is the center for pointe. (They also offer an MFA in dance.) TheDad would know more.</p>