Paris and the Art of Interdisciplinary Study

Applying to College
1

<p>Hi all,</p>

<p>It's my first time on this thread. I'm a university student who has just about wrapped up a lovely freshman and sophomore year at a Canadian university. I am pursuing a double major in Economics and Philosophy and am very very very interested in what I am studying. </p>

<p>Because of a love for French and culture, I've decided to spend my junior year studying in Paris. I decided to finish my Economics major here at the university Sciences Po (L'universite des Etudes de Sciences Politiques). I choose the school because I think it has an awesome program for study abroad students, and a great variety of courses in French and English, taught by world-renowned dudes and dudettes.</p>

<p>However, one thing that saddens me is that, although this university is very interdisciplinary within the Social Sciences, it has absolutely NO philosophy courses available, aside from an elective or two. I've found this academic kind of segregation much more common in France than in North America.</p>

<p>I was wondering- would there be any way that I would be able to take a philosophy course outside of my study abroad institution (maybe at the Sorbonne, a university well known for its Humanities courses), along with my economics courses at Sciences Po?
Do you know anyone who has done something like this on a study abroad program?
If not (or if you discourage it), do you have any ideas of how I could pursue this academic passion outside of class, in France?
any ideas/past experiences would be welcome.</p>

<p>I think it would be a shame to spend a year in France without immersing myself a bit in this!</p>

2

<p>What do you mean you’ve decided to finish your Econ major at SciencesPo? Do you want to transfer or study abroad there? Do you speak French by the way, because you managed to spell SciencesPo’s name wrong (it is actually Institut d’</p>

3

<p>Haha! totally my fault. I had meant to go back and switch that. copied it from a previous e-mail i had written months back when first finding out about getting nominated, as I had had this question beforehand. I’ll change it now, if I can. Yes, I learned to spell the name properly since then.</p>

<p>1) False assumption. Even if I had made a grave spelling mistake, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t speak French. The President of our university’s French Association was a native french speaker, for example, but couldn’t spell french for beans.<br>
2) I speak nearly fluent French. I have spent a summer in Quebec earning a French immersion credit, where I was a camp counselor for a Francophone camp, and was never told that I wasn’t understood. My writing is also good (when i check it).
3) You don’t need to speak French to study at Sciences Po. It’s one of the few French schools that has an entire curriculum of courses available in English.</p>

<p>And no, I don’t plan on transferring. I have 2 more electives to finish to complete my economics major, and I will complete them during my study abroad.</p>