<p>Econ 3240 is American Economic History II. I am wondering why it isn't crosslisted in the history or AMST department. Is it heavily quantitative? I don't see how a history class can be quantitative, but it isn't cross-listed, so...</p>
<p>3212 is Public Opinion and Representation. Not sure what to expect.</p>
<p>3313 is Middle-Eastern Politics. How is this different from the History of the Israel-Palestinian Conflict class?</p>
<p>3633 is crosslisted as SOC 2480. It's Politics and Culture. 3633 is a pretty high number, so I'm somewhat intimidated. Again, not sure what to expect.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I didn't get into The American Presidency (capped at 50 for some weird reason) or Intermediate Macro.</p>
<p>The second number of a course just indicates the classification of the subject matter, not level; only the first one indicates level (and level does not mean it’s easy; PHYS 1116 is one of the most difficult classes while there are easy 4000-level Math classes, which is probably not what one would expect).</p>
<p>Zenzic highlights an important point; course numbers do not correspond to difficulty and in fact vary by department. The only consistency is that 100-level indicates introductory material of some kind. I think in math the honors level Calculus courses are among the hardest at the university. While 400-level math classes may require knowledge from previous levels, that doesn’t necessitate that they are more difficult (unless you don’t have the necessary knowledge). In Government for example, there is no compelling reason to take 100-level courses before 300-level courses and I don’t think I finished my 2nd introductory class until my junior year, having taken multiple 300-level courses. That said, the information in those 100-level courses is less specialized/more general, but not necessarily easier. Intro to IR is probably among the hardest Government classes. </p>
<p>In Econ, 300-level courses indicate that they are related to general economic theory, whereas 400-level courses are specialized (like the economics of China) and have a reputation for being easier. </p>
<p>I wouldn’t get too hung up on why Econ 3240 isn’t cross-listed. Cross-listing requires inter-departmental cooperation and that doesn’t automatically happen. If enough students asked for cross-listing, the departments would probably consider it. I know for my IR minor, I got a couple courses that weren’t labeled as qualifying approved by the coordinator and the next semester, one was added to to the list of possible courses. 3240 is labeled SBA, so my guess is that it’s not a straight up history class and does involve economic analysis. I also noticed it requires Econ 101-102, so my guess is you do have to do some quantitative problems, probably related to applying basic economic theory to historical circumstances. From my recollection of 101-102, this means the worst case is some easy derivatives, although application of high school algebra can often be tougher. This is all a guess though; you can try e-mailing the professor and see if he/she will send you a past syllabus. </p>
<p>3313 is an awesome class. Prof. Patel is the reason I ended up pursuing a Government double major in addition to Econ. I took History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (also a great class) but they are VASTLY different. MEP is a traditional political science class, where you evaluate political theories in the context of critically engaging the politics/societies of the Middle East. Some modern history is involved, but it’s mostly current. There is little Israel/Palestine in the course because it’s not Patel’s specialty and he prefers focusing on other subjects because Israel/Palestine is offered as another class. Patel, even moreso than Katzenstein in my opinion, approaches Government courses with the goal of training his students to be more analytical/critical thinkers, rather than learn a lot of facts.</p>
<p>History of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a straight-up history class and I’d guess its cross-listing with Government is largely because the conflict’s history DOES obviously involve a lot of messy politics. Prof. Brann is among the friendliest I’ve met at Cornell and while he’s not necessarily the most interesting lecturer, you WILL learn a lot. You will end up reading (amongst other things) the better part of a dense 800 page textbook on the conflict. Quite a lot of history for one of the youngest countries in the modern world…</p>