<p>Hi.</p>
<p>Erm, okay, so I applied to Gallatin on a whim, and I've been accepted to the university. I am in love with the idea of an individualized major, but I don't really know that much about the program.</p>
<p>I did check out the website, but I was wondering if anyone could give me a quick rundown of how things work.</p>
<p>You appear on the NYU campus in the fall . . . How do you go about with the major from there?</p>
<p>to add on to this question - </p>
<p>does anyone know approx. how many students are in Gallatin?</p>
<p>If you decide to go to NYU, after you send in your deposit, Gallatin will send you a packet that has a lot of great info in it. I’ll try to put the important stuff here. The first thing you do is go to orientation in June. According to the packet (if I understand it correctly) you meet with your Gallatin advisor for the first time at orientation and discuss what you want your concentration to be. I believe you register for classes during orientation as well. In sophomore year, you finalize your concentration. (I think you have to submit a proposal and have it approved by your advisor.)</p>
<p>Hope that helps! Go to the Gallatin website for more info. It’s very thorough. :)</p>
<p>@treestreet I believe it’s just over a thousand undergrad.</p>
<p>I’m a current Gallatin freshman. To add onto what Illy said, at the Gallatin orientation in June, you’ll meet with an advisor (who will NOT, in most cases, be the same advisor that you’ll actually have during the year–those get assigned in the fall) and register for your fall classes. When you get here in the fall, you have to take both a Gallatin First-Year Interdisciplinary Seminar and a First-Year Writing Seminar), and in the spring you take a First-Year Research Seminar. Other than those classes, you’ll pretty much take whatever classes you want (provided that there aren’t any prerequisites you haven’t filled yet and your advisor approves of your schedule–in my experience, my advisors have been really open to all the classes I wanted to take). You’ll also meet with your advisor about registering for classes and checking in throughout the semesters, but you don’t really need to have a clear idea of exactly what your concentration is yet (although it is good to have a general idea, I’m finding). I’m not as helpful about what comes after freshman year in developing your concentration, since I’m in the process of figuring that out, but it seems like a lot of it will come out of different classes you take/working with your advisor and you develop it from there.</p>
<p>If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Gallatin probably is a lot more complicated to figure out than more “normal” college programs, but I really really love being able to study exactly what I’m interested in here and take the classes that I want even as a freshman.</p>
<p>Would you say that there is a strong “Gallatin community” within NYU? I really love the program, but I’m worried that I’ll get “lost” within the 20,000 other students at NYU. Would you say you’re pretty much on your own, or does it feel more like a small liberal arts school within this massive university ?</p>
<p>treestreet91 poses exactly our question. Son also accepted to Gallatin, and has program in mind (cognitive science, video game design and research, philosophy). But we’re really wondering if he’ll get lost, especially because he’s not the most out-going or socially at east kid ever. At the same time, he’s eager to engage with other really bright kids who want to talk about their ideas. Any description of how “real” the mentoring and advising is, and what help there is to feel part of a community (of course, part of it is on our kid!) would be appreciated. We’d been visualizing more of a small, campus focused LAC. Thanks.</p>
<p>I was accepted into the LSP program, though I applied to Gallatin. If I attend and intend on still continuing on to Gallatin, will I follow the same timeline in regards to meeting with an advisor, picking a concentration, etc., or will I have to do all of that my junior year?</p>
<p>xletsgroove: I’m not positive about this, but I have a friend in LSP and I know she has her own LSP advisor and is still deciding where to go after sophomore year (and I know Gallatin was one of her options), so I would assume you’d be doing that your junior year. </p>
<p>treestreet and momwonders: I think Gallatin is a strong community in some ways and not in others. The school definitely has a lot of activities to get involved with and events that foster more of a community throughout the school if you choose to be involved with them, and the fact that there are small classes and fewer students definitely allows everyone to know each other better than at the other schools at NYU. At the same time, you are at Gallatin within NYU, and since pretty much everything but the Gallatin building (dorms, dining halls, the student center, library, etc.) is for everyone at NYU, it DEFINITELY does not feel the same as going to a regular small liberal arts school would be. As a result, it is easy to feel kind of isolated. That being said, if you make an effort to get involved and form smaller communities within NYU (not just within Gallatin–most of my friends are in other NYU schools), you can definitely find a sense of belonging despite the size. Like momwonders’ son, I’m a shy person, so I definitely have felt kind of on my own throughout the year a lot, probably more so than most people, but because 7 out of my 8 classes that I’ve been in have been under 20 people and I have gotten involved with things throughout Gallatin, I still do feel like I belong at the school and am part of a community. I also really love the academics here and the small classes, and I think that they help to form more of a community than if I were in a bunch of big lecture classes with students from a bunch of different schools at NYU. This is definitely a school where you have to be aggressive and really go after what you want though, probably much more so than at other NYU schools because of all the individualized stuff.
As far as advising goes, I think it depends on the person–I actually just got assigned to a new advisor this semester and I’ve only met with him twice, so for me, my advising hasn’t been all that involved so far (although I hope it will improve with time), but then I also know people who are super close with their advisors, so it really depends. And you can always change advisors if you feel they’re not the best person for you. </p>
<p>I hope that helped somewhat…it’s kind of hard for me to explain the community at Gallatin because it feels like both a small school and a big school at the same time, but hopefully that made some sense. If you want to know more feel free to PM me or something and I can try to explain things better.</p>
<p>What happens if you can’t make the June orientation?</p>
<p>And how are Gallatin advisors assigned? Are they completely random?</p>
<p>If you can’t make the June orientation, there’s another orientation for people during Welcome Week. </p>
<p>And they assign your advisor based on a questionnaire that you fill out before June orientation about your interests and what you want to study at Gallatin (so you can be placed with a faculty member who hopefully has a background in what you want to study).</p>