<p>@aleph0: Oh, seems like I am out of luck for this class! But the one that you mentioned - GEOL0050: Mars, Moon and the Earth - looks equally interesting, if not more than GEOL 0160A - Exploration of Mars. I, like you, will try to incorporate this exciting class as my fifth course for the first semester, although I am not sure whether I will be able to handle such a workload or not. On a similar note, if I may ask, how was the experience of taking five classes your first semester? Was it bearable or was it difficult? Most people advise against this for the sake of sinking in to Brown’s environment first; I would love to have your take on this!</p>
<p>@Harvard: You seemed to have misinterpreted my sentiments from the original post. It wasn’t accusatory, I was simply joking at the fact that I could not locate a similar course and it seemed very interesting. But I would also like to hear more about someone’s take on 5 courses a semester. Although I have ruled out it for my first semester for social reasons, I would consider it in future years.</p>
<p>@Royal: No hard feelings this side as well mate!</p>
<p>@RoyalFlush and harvard17: I decided to do five classes my first semester (and probably will continue to do so the rest of my time here) partly due to circumstance. I will be accepting advanced standing and graduating in 3 years, so I wanted to make full use of my time at Brown. That said, I’m not saying that taking five classes is the only (or even the best) way to make full use of your time here. There are a million other things to do, but personally I felt that taking a fifth class served my intellectual interests best.</p>
<p>I guess the point I’m trying to make is that you should take a fifth class after a considered evaluation of what you ultimately want from your time at Brown, and of course be very prepared to work hard. The workload is definitely manageable if you choose your classes well and have a genuine interest in what you are doing. If you are at all unsure, you can always opt to do a class S/NC the first time you are trying for five just to get a feel of the load. That said, a lot depends on the specific classes you are taking. Sometimes five classes feel like four, and other times they may feel like six.</p>
<p>Hope that was helpful. Feel free to PM me if you want more specifics.</p>
<p>We generally advise against 5 courses freshman fall (I took 4 in the fall to relax and have taken 5 every term since; however, several of my classes are 15+ hours a week of outside preparation, which essentially leaves no time for clubs or a social life). It really depends on you and the courses. It is potentially doable, but you’ll be in the distinct minority should you do so, and it might be overwhelming. If you’re considering multiple lab sciences or some combination of math 35, physics 7, and CS19, or you’ll have a new language (or two), or you want to take MCM, I wouldn’t advise it, due to the large amounts of extra time those courses take - doing any of those almost is like taking still another course. If you’re not, though, and your advisor gives the go-ahead, you can try, understanding that you’ll have less time to adjust to college life and meet people outside of class than your peers will.</p>
<p>Been thinking of my first-semester schedule and so far I’ve come up with this:</p>
<p>Definitely taking:
ECON 0110 - Principles of Economics
MATH 0170 - Advanced Placement Algebra (wondering whether to take MATH0180 but haven’t done maths for quite a while now since my high school graduation a year ago)</p>
<p>Maybe:
GRMN0100 - Beginning German (I’ve wanted to learn German for quite a while now)
ENGN0900 - Management of Industrial and Nonprofit Organizations
PHIL0800 - Existentialism</p>
<p>And a first year seminar (my three choices):
Rites of Passage
Writers on Writing Seminar
Turning Japanese</p>
<p>Now the only thing is I really want to take ENGN0900 so should I just leave it for second semester? </p>
<p>Any feedback?</p>
<p>If you take GRMN0100, try for the 11 AM section if possible. That’s the one taught by the actual professor (who has amazing ratings).</p>
<p>ENGN0900 is spring term only, so that’s not really an option. Same with Existentialism. Be prepared for MATH0170; it wasn’t bad last year, but it was quite a challenge the year before. What is your background? If you completed the equivalent of BC Calculus, 17 is not likely a good option, and 18 would likely be a better choice - sequences and series are not particularly important, though if you feel you’d benefit from a quick review of integration, you should shop 17.</p>
<p>Edit: I see; you meant PHIL0080, not 0800 and ENGN0090, not 0900. Those courses would not be offered during your 2nd semester. I’d recommend you shop them all and decide what you want; you’ll have 3 more fall semesters after this one, and there tend to be fewer exceptional fall courses than spring courses.</p>
<p>It seems I misplaced the zero. Sorry. I have taken the British A’ Level in Mathematics which is think is a bit more advanced than the AP one you have in the US. </p>
<p>From a workload viewpoint, do you think it’s a balanced schedule?</p>
<p>That seems to be the case; as it’s been awhile, you may want to consider the placement exam offered during orientation; 17 or 18 would likely be appropriate placement, as you suspected. That seems more or less balanced, putting off ENGN0090 would probably make it a bit more balanced, though I don’t see that as being necessary.</p>
<p>@bdude: I took A Level Mathematics as well and MATH18 is definitely the place for you to go. Take the placement test if you are unsure, but MATH17, if you decide to go for it, would mostly be a review of material you have learnt before.</p>
<p>I’m loving all the econ and math schedules. Future apma kids no doubt! </p>
<p>If mathematics is something you love and you’re at the Math18 level already, the honors calculus course (Math35) might be something to look into. That being said, almost everything you’ve heard about that course… is true. hahaha</p>
<p>Yeah those who feel up for it can definitely try for MATH35, it is relatively easy to drop down to MATH18/20 if you find the class to difficult/workload too intense.</p>
<p>@aleph0: Having read your and Uroogla’s reply to my query, I have decided to keep my first semester courses to four. Once I am done with the first semester and feel comfortable in Brown’s environment, I will expand to five courses per semester! Thanks a lot!</p>
<p>So my question is whether course times change frequently before the school year starts. I have seen several notifications on Banner of an adjusted course time, but I am not sure if this is indicative of a common summer occurrence. My concern is that I have a couple courses I am definitively taking and unless their times were to change, it would not make sense to choose an overlapping FYS. An example would be Adventures in Nanoworld and Introduction to Neuroscience; now that I think about it since the FYS is more restrictive in the sense I only have one chance to take it, it would make more sense for me to postpone the alternative class. Nonetheless, still wondering…Oh and for those still deciding on their FYS choices, I heard Adventures in Nanoworld requires about a 15 hour per week time commitment and the teacher has a heavy accent - just a thought.</p>
<p>The times you see on Banner now should be more or less already finalised. This is especially so for the big classes (NEUR1 being one of them), where changing the meeting time now would wreck havoc in the schedules of a large number of students. That said, I wouldn’t rule the possibility of a time change in a few of the smaller classes.</p>
<p>From my friends who took Adventures in Nanoworld (the professor was my advisor, and I would have taken the class if it didn’t conflict with a CS class), the class, and especially the professor, is awesome. From what I know of him as well, Dima Feldman knows tons of everything (despite being a physicist, he knows about history, how the Macedonians affected world development… and pretty much everything you have an idea about. In one of my advisor meetings we got to talking about stuff I was learning in an anthropology class.) However, he told me he was taking a sabbatical next year: unless it’s only a one-semester sabbatical, I don’t know how adventures in nanoworld would be taught.</p>
<p>When it says the meeting pattern has changed, this doesn’t necessarily mean the time of the class has changed (they should be pretty fixed by now). It may mean a meeting location has been added, instead.</p>
<p>Hello everyone!</p>
<p>I request you all to help me shortlist FYSs and CAPs by giving me your valued opinion on the following courses that I have been able to find after having gone through that exhaustive list of FYSs and CAPs on the ‘Summer Course Lottery’ website.</p>
<p>FYSs:</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>CAPs:</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>I know this is a really long list, but I just can’t seem to restrict my intellectual curiosity when I see the aforementioned courses!</p>
<p>So, out of these courses, could you recommend some that are as interesting as the course catalog says?</p>
<p>Thanks a lot for your time!</p>
<p>^Honestly, the fun of “shopping period” is not having others tell you their opinion of a particular course but instead going to the classes you are interested in and forming your own opinion. I highly recommend you shop all the classes you might have an interest in and see for yourself. Course content, assignments, types of students in these classes, etc. change every year and you may be giving up on an awesome class based off of the opinion of someone that a) probably had a bad experience or b) never even taken the particular class he is giving his opinion about and is spreading hyperbole through the grapevine.</p>
<p>I’m all for giving my opinion on classes I’ve taken, but I always encourage people to still shop a class that I may not have particularly liked. YOU may like it. I took a class last semester that many people recommended I shouldn’t; I’m happy I did because I enjoyed it, liked the professor, and did well in the class. You really should go to the class and just experience it all for yourself! Good luck though! And maybe I’ll see you in Intro to Neuro…I hear it’s a fun class (and I hear it’s a lot of work), but we shall see!</p>
<p>^That is what I was thinking about initially, AmbitiousMind! Shopping Period, as you described, is the right medium to ‘test’ different classes and environments, and eventually choose what you think is best for you. But it turns out that I have to send my choices by June 21, 2010 for the aforementioned classes. Please correct me if I am wrong!</p>