IFS Course Recommendations

<p>I will be a freshman at IU this fall and have heard a lot of great things about the IFS program. I'm trying to determine which courses to put down on my application. As I don't have any credit in the Arts and Humanities general education category, I was considering a course in this area. However, a lot of the A and H options for IFS seem very writing intensive and I am afraid taking one of the courses would negatively affect my GPA. If writing is weakness of mine, would I be better off waiting until the fall to take less writing based A and H courses? My main concern is a professor who takes a lot of points off for the quality of my writing versus the actual content.</p>

<p>Additionally, I am in Hutton and I read some previous posts stating there were honors versions of IFS courses. I couldn't find anything about honors IFS courses running this fall. Does anyone have any information about this?</p>

<p>Thanks for your help </p>

<p>Mom here. I can only tell you about the IFS class my daughter took last year - Leaving Teenage Wasteland with Dana Anderson. All 18 students got As (3 A+, 12 A, 3 A-). My daughter is not crazy about writing and she got A’s on all of the papers. Dana is a great professor - he really relates to the students and my daughter described the class as a lot of fun. You read several “coming of age” books and write reflective papers, but none are difficult. I think she would HIGHLY recommend this class and the professor. I think this is an excellent class to fulfill an A&H requirement, especially if you consider writing a weakness, since it seems to be graded pretty easy.</p>

<p>Last year was the first year they offered IFS classes for honors credit and there was nothing posted on the website about honors versions of IFS classes. After registering for IFS, my daughter received an email saying they were offering honors credit for her class and as a Hutton Honors student she was eligible (but not required) to take it for honors credit. She did, and the only difference was her final paper had to be twice as long (I think it was 6 pages vs. 3 pages). She said it was no big deal at all and she’s glad she did it.</p>

<p>I’m surprised they haven’t made the IFS honors credit more official now that they have one year under their belt, but I don’t see anything on the IFS website about honors credit. You may want to contact the IFS staff at <a href=“mailto:ifs@indiana.edu”>ifs@indiana.edu</a> and ask which IFS classes will be offered for honors credit (if any).</p>

<p>I applaud you for considering IFS. As a parent of an only child, it was hard to say goodbye to my daughter 2 ½ weeks earlier than expected, but it was well worth it for her. When school started, she already had a group of friends, knew her way around campus, had her laptop set up with IU stuff, etc. It’s a great program!</p>

<p>Thanks for the information stbemtpynest, very helpful. </p>