<p>I am a newly admitted Chinese student, and I want to learn German in Cornell. Could anyone please tell me how are the German courses? Also, I plan to study abroad for a year in Germany. How is the program?</p>
<p>Any opinions or advice will be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I did a German minor at Cornell. I loved the department. The intro courses are the largest at 20-30 students, but after that, the courses are usually ~10 students. All the faculty are enthusiastic. I didn’t do abroad in Germany, but I know people who did and the department will work closely with you to make it happen.</p>
<p>Hi mikeyc765, I guess you don’t need to do a German minor in order to take German courses, right?</p>
<p>And another question: there are several German courses taught in German that are available only to students with certain prerequisites like SAT II German scores. If I self-study German before college without taking any exams, will I be able to take these classes directly without first taking introductory German courses?</p>
<p>I took two semesters of German just for fun although they could have also fulfilled my CALS humanities requirement for me. If you have prior knowledge of German, you should be able to take the placement test at the beginning of the semester to place into a higher level. I really enjoyed the courses I took and would have pursued the minor if I had started the language earlier. I intended to take more German but in the end the courses conflicted with courses required for my major and I just ran out of time before graduation.</p>
<p>No, you don’t need to declare a German major/minor to take the courses. If you have prior knowledge of German, you should take the placement test. Even if you took the SATII, I still think you need to take the placement test (and it’s a good idea so you aren’t in a class that’s too easy/too hard). </p>
<p>I will say this though, don’t self-study German and then decide you want to take German I and get an easy A. I’ve seen the instructors in both intro semesters kick people out of the class on the first day because their German level was too high for the class.</p>
<p>Language courses are fairly time consuming; especially at the beginner levels. Make sure you prepare yourself since it’ll probably interfere with other coursework.</p>
<p>I would like to take Korean at Cornell and the Intro professor told me class time is either 6 or 7 hours per week, don’t recall which at the top of my head. I even asked her if I should prepare in advance and she said to wait to take it at Cornell.</p>
<p>I have friends who took Spanish and Mandarin and I would say that German is no where near as time consuming as those. Yes the class meets every day but the homework was never more than an hour a night and I felt well prepared for the quizzes and tests after completing the homework.</p>