Hi, we are looking for help/info on the upcoming lottery date of June 5 for incoming freshmen at Brown. Specifically, there is something to be done with course selection for First Year Seminar courses and Curricular Advising Programs. But what? And how to find better info on these CAP courses?
And how does one pick these courses when no placement decisions have been made for other courses - so the student can’t know what days/times are open for these “extra” courses!
If anybody has info or links to suggest, please chime in! Please do NOT tell us to simply search this forum - the info is outdated and spread out and SURELY others are in our same boat???
Try this website: https://selfservice.brown.edu/ss/bwckctlg.p_disp_cat_term_date. It looks like you can search for classes and then find when they are offered.
I did some searching to help answer your question, and discovered that Brown seems to have eliminated the wonderful website that used to be used by everyone in building their schedule (mocha). Maybe there is a good replacement that I just can’t find – in which case a current student will have to chime in.
If your kid has a Brown ID and password, google Brown Critical Review where you can read reviews of classes and professors. Although this also seems out of date.
Don’t worry so much about the scheduling piece. Enter the lottery for the class/classes that look of most interest. These aren’t “extra” courses – they are equal weight to anything the student takes. Most students spend the first 2 weeks shopping classes, so spaces open up in many classes as students make changes. Only exception to this is if your kid is an engineer, which probably has the most rigid schedule. Everything else is more fluid, and if there’s a conflict, you probably can take that class another time. Compromise is always made when building a class schedule.
Freshmen are always a step behind in this process, because they can’t talk to other students about classes and professors. This happens only in the first semester – and again, because of shopping period, they still have time to gather intelligence to make decisions.
What @fireandrain is referring to is the new Courses@Brown website, which allows you to search for courses and see your entire schedule.
@hhjjlala Yes, thanks! We have gone through that. It is next to impossible to pull up the Curricular Advising Program courses, but first year seminar courses are easy to find. We decided to approach it in the opposite direction - look through recommended course sequence for the likely concentration, think about THOSE possible courses for this fall, add in a fave elective…bingo, no room for either FYS or CAP. And so no concern about the lottery!