<p>There is a statement for General Education Requirement courses that they may be double counted toward other requirements in the General Education Curriculum (except for the Writing and Foreign Language Requirements) as well as toward the Major or minor. At the same time every semester approved lists for those courses are different, electives for minor are different as well. How are they declared double counted - at the moment of registration? Also, when student registers for some courses does s/he specify what requirement or sector(s) that course should be counted?</p>
<p>bump…that was ridiculously confusing…</p>
<p>Alright so here’s the deal with the requirements.</p>
<p>There are four sets of requirements in the College (I’m pretty sure it’s similar in the other schools as well): sectors, foundational approaches, major and elective. There are seven sectors and six foundational approaches, and majors have different course requirements. Electives are all other courses… you may need some free electives to reach the 32-36 c.u. graduation requirement. </p>
<p>Now, at most schools these requirements are rigid; everyone must take introductory calculus, for example. Penn is not this way. Therefore, each semester, a number of courses (sometimes more than two dozen) are selected to fulfill a requirement, and students have the freedom to select a course that interests them. These requirements are designed to force students to go outside their comfort zone in course selection but not to force students to take a course they will hate or do poorly in. I’m seriously not a fan of hard sciences, and there are three science requirements for me… so what did I take? Survey of the Universe (ASTR001) fulfilled the Physical World requirement and the Quantitative Data Analysis requirement; Introductory Psychology (PSYC001) will fulfill my Living World requirement this semester; next year Philosophy of Science will fulfill my Natural Sciences and Mathematics requirement.</p>
<p>To double counting… Penn is good about that. You cannot count a course for multiple sectors OR multiple foundational approaches, but you CAN count a course for a sector AND a foundational approach. There is no limit on this, so theoretically you could take all courses which counted both for foundational approaches AND sector requirements and get away with taking seven courses instead of the typical 11-14. Major requirements are a little different. Some majors such as Political Science are VERY loose with their requirements… I just need to take courses in three of the four subfields (comparative politics, international relations, American politics and political theory) as part of twelve total Political Science courses; I can also count “major-related” courses (I took a course called “Foreign in Germany” which is about immigration in Germany, but it was a German course taught in German… I can count that toward PSCI though). Other majors are very rigid… Biology majors MUST take BIOL101; Math majors MUST take Math 104, 114, 240, 241 and some others. In these majors you can double count ONE sector requirement toward the major (for example, I took PSCI183, and that counted for the History and Tradition sector as well as my major; I also took PHIL002, which counts as a major related course and would have counted toward the Society sector, but because of the other course I couldn’t double count PHIL002… I had to choose another Society course).</p>
<p>Finally, declaring these requirements fulfilled is a piece of cake. When you enroll, you have access to Penn InTouch, which helps you register for courses, take care of financial matters, see grades, etc. You have an academic “worksheet,” which you can edit yourself to track your progress, but when you declare your major (nobody comes in with a declared major… everyone is undeclared regardless of what they put on their application), your major advisor will make your worksheet “official.” He/She will look at the courses you have already taken and help you to declare different courses for different requirements. It’s pretty cool, actually… when I went in to declare Political Science, I had only taken one course and was enrolled in two that semester, yet my advisor showed me that I actually had six courses that would count toward the major.</p>