<p>For freshmen year do you pick your professors? I know you have gen Ed's but do you pick the prof you want in the class?</p>
<p>At most schools, you can attempt it. The course listings usually indicate who is teaching each section, so you can try for a section taught by the professor you prefer.</p>
<p>However, realistically speaking, this may not work out. Sophomores and upperclassmen take the same courses, and they register before you do. If one professor is very clearly superior to another, they are likely to sign up for that professor’s section. So the better professor’s section may already be full. Even if the college holds some seats in each section open for freshmen, only the minimum number of seats will be available in the better professor’s section, and those seats will go fast.</p>
<p>My son will be a junior next year. He registered last Monday for next fall already. He’s not had any problem getting a specific professor. Some classes don’t matter, but others do.</p>
<p>Use “rate my professor”. Some professors do not speak English very well and are hard to understand. Others leave all the teaching up to assistants, who quite frankly don’t know what they’re doing. You can read all that on the website.</p>
<p>It’s worth a try.</p>
<p>You pick your course section, ie the time and days of the course. Therefore you can choose the section taught by a given professor IF it is available and fits your schedule. Sometimes you may have to choose between the professor and other courses that conflict. It should get easier beyond freshmen year when you get to register sooner and the courses you want are not taken by as many students. Students also plan their schedule now or during the summer registration for freshmen and can change it when openings come up as late as the first week of classes- thanks to computers.</p>
<p>I’d argue that it gets harder in successive years. There’s always gonna be someone who registers before you, and classes get smaller. There’s a big difference between squeezing 5 more into a tiny classroom of 15 and squeezing 5 more into a giant lecture hall of 300. Further, you have more options with what you can take freshman year than any other year. You can take Econ this semester or next semester, or you can take it in the summer. And if those all don’t work out there’s next year. Plus there’s probably multiple sections of most of your classes. When you’re a sophomore/junior/senior and your classes are only offered one section a year or one section every 2 years, you gotta take it now or never.</p>
<p>Vladenschlutte-I would say that my experience was exactly opposite of that, it was EASIER as you got older to pick certain times/certain profs for classes. Other than first semester freshman year, I got into every single class/professor I wanted. I don’t know anyone at my school that didn’t have the same experience.</p>
<p>That is where being in Honors and having priority registration is great. So, some have more opportunities than others. And not all have just gen. Ed’s in first semester, Actually, it is great to have your killer weed out class in first semester at college, this way you will not waste much time and still have a chance to graduate in 4 years if you decided to switch majors after first semester.<br>
So, I imagine that it depends on college / major / Honors…some other factors…</p>
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<p>Maybe it just depends on the school. At least where I go, it seems easier the younger you are for the reasons I mentioned. The only semester I ever wasn’t able to get into something I wanted to take was this current one. 2 classes I wanted to take (1 meant for undergrad 2nd semester sophomore-senior, the other meant for junior-first year grads) were mostly filled by grad students before undergrads could register because they didn’t have enough seats and grad students register first, which never happens for classes often taken by freshmen. Another class was canceled due to low enrollment, which also never happens for classes often taken by freshmen. And I am not the only one who has run into this sort of thing. </p>
<p>It’s also dependent on the department (and field within department) size too. Things are more difficult in smaller departments, and some departments just schedule their classes strangely.</p>
<p>Maybe it’s because I’ve had a bad cold and my eyes are watery, but I could have sworn the title of the thread was pickling my prof, and that sounded a lot more interesting? </p>
<p>Just thought I’d share. </p>
<p>Sometimes, it’s worth choosing the class a great prof teaches, rather than choosing a prof for a certain section of a larger class.</p>
<p>Let me add a piece of advice on this–if you can do this, pick your courses based on whether the prof has a reputation for excellent teaching. Don’t take a course from a bad professor, even if it’s a subject that fascinates you, unless you absolutely have to.</p>
<p>Of course, you could also end up with a great prof but a terrible section instructor.</p>
<p>And of course, with rate my professor you have to read between the lines and take the critiques with a grain of salt.</p>