<p>So here, what I heard is that some people take up to 3 rigorous courses to set themselves up competively as transfer students to really good schools. However, I have heard other people that took 4-5 rigorous ones and ones aside are "fluffy As." Yet, another person in attempt of transferring is planning to take as much as he can. I'd like to challenge myself during my first and second college years to show that I am capable of performing beyond others, but my question is how many hard classes do you guys think a semester is considered enough to not let GPA sink and can be evaluated by top schools? I just want to hear some opinions...</p>
<p>Are you even serious right now? I should hope that your course selection is not entirely predicated upon the false notion that somehow choosing the “right” courses – balancing rigor with expected GPA outcome – will lock down your transfer application, and I should hope further that your goals for the next year are not centered solely on transfer success. This is a full year of your college life. You should take courses that interest you and that will be pertinent later on (i.e. fulfill major/professional school/distribution requirements). Subject to those constraints, I would suggest (begrudgingly) that you opt for some of the more rigorous offerings provided you can do reasonably well overall. If you are not a big fan of poco or you have trouble distilling complex ideas into cogent papers, you should probably not take a course entitled “Chomsky, Said, and the Modern Middle East,” for instance. Almost any college will have offerings that match your interests, so sign up for those first. If you still have space, consider challenging yourself in other areas, but remember that overextending yourself will have repercussions to which no course is immune. Basically, I think you are going about this all wrong, especially since colleges do not go around cataloging and objectively ranking in terms of rigor courses at other institutions. Granted that taking all 100-level courses might look a bit weak, take what you enjoy and what you think you will do well in, since your perception of rigor is likely inconsistent with the adcoms’.</p>
<p>By the way, <a href=“http://www.theonion.com/articles/exhausted-noam-chomsky-just-going-to-try-and-enjoy,17404/[/url]”>http://www.theonion.com/articles/exhausted-noam-chomsky-just-going-to-try-and-enjoy,17404/</a></p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I’ve knew along that being overwhelmed by extensive rigors leads to a concern of the affect of a decreasing GPA. Since someone had brought that up, I was a little mixed up from there. So if the case is to balance out “right classes” with rigorous curriculums on the other side, does it mean that classes that are interesting and related to your major must show the challenge on both sides?</p>
<p>It gets obsolete, but I’m near the point where I’ll have enough information to know and apply.</p>
<p>In the sciences, it is typically a bad idea to take courses that you do not need in your early college years; it is preferable to wait until you meet the prereqs of upper-level science electives to take them, if you take them at all. The exceptions, of course, are classical physics (potentially difficult, but broadly valuable) and psychology (more of a social science than anything else). Barring those, and unless you are looking to fill pre-med reqs, don’t dip your toes in the sciences. The humanities are universally more engaging as electives, and substantially less stressful – on balance, even if the time inputs are similar, papers are substantially more stressful than difficult, comprehensive exams.</p>
<p>Follow guidelines set up for your major at the university. In reality, the committees are not going to analyze every course, they will glance over the 100 200 numbers and it will make a myopic dent on your application. Do well in courses that are going to be ‘Valuable’ to your education goals… You’ll see once you attend college. Your major may change, your goals may change stick to some suggestions and talk with your advisor about this for scheduling. Best of luck and take it slow! Don’t have this all in your mind or your years before you transfer will be miserable.</p>
<p>And the years subsequent as well…learning to live for the moment is probably one of the most valuable lessons that competitive students learn in college. At least that was the case for me: in high-school, it was all about getting into college, but once I got here I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. It took me a full semester to learn that there was more to life than grades and ECs, but when I did it was transformative.</p>
<p>You’re getting some really bad advice here. Take the most challenging, high level classes you can handle. Especially if you could not have gotten into the colleges you’re aiming for out of high school–a bunch of 100 and 200 level courses that fulfill prereqs won’t impress top colleges.</p>
<p>Looking at your post history, I’m going to go ahead and say that you have no idea what you’re talking about. Moreover, I doubt that you are even a recent student, though I could be wrong and it doesn’t particularly matter anyway. What matters is that you are what’s wrong with CC, you are the stress-provoking naysayer who enforces the tautological system of worth evaluation. The OP will be attending a respectable institution in the fall, and I would be remiss as a rising junior having just gone through what the OP is about to experience (not with regard to planned transfer, but college in general) not to admonish him/her to enjoy college, to grab it by the balls, and to filter out your useless advice. This is a year of his/her life, after all, not yours, and to suggest that s/he should plan it without any consideration of his/her happiness or of how it might help him/her develop as a person is borderline sociopathic.</p>
<p>As an aside, while prereqs may or may not impress top colleges (from experience, I maintain that they can if they have attached to them the right grades), they are indisputably critical – if a college sees that a student has no clear trajectory and hasn’t even completed the early stages of a basic major sequence, they are significantly disinclined to accept the student. College/university is about learning, after all.</p>