Hi there,
I’m a Princeton 2022 class member, and I was wondering how the whole course selection process works. I am tentative for ELE and am hoping to acquire the Finance, Applied Maths, and Robotics certificates. I may look to work for the Stats certificate as well. However, I am unsure about how to plan to get these, as the University is leaving course planning to the fall. However, I feel strongly about taking five courses the first semester to help pave the path to meet these certificate requirements. I know that special permission from the advisor is required for this–I was wondering how difficult it is to acquire it? I successfully completed six IB HL examinations and courses (the DP only allows for four) and am used to intense writing and reading and workloads (maybe not PU level but exceptionally hellish workloads) so I am not overly (slightly but not a lot) concerned with the burden of a fifth and extra course. Still, I am just wondering how the process works and how to gain permission for the extra class the fall semester.
Rising junior in the econ department. I know a couple engineers who took 5 classes their freshman fall - not sure what they told their advisors, but it’s definitely possible and not exceptionally hard to do so, and I’m sure you’ll be able to do it. Your intended concentration and certificates will definitely be a lot of math/engineering work and problem sets, but if you feel confident in your abilities to handle the workload, then I won’t discourage you.
Course selection happens after you get back from OA/CA in mid-september. I would spend some time now looking at the course offerings on the registrar’s website and planning out your schedule - recal.io is great for this. There’s a 50% chance that you’ll be assigned to a fall writing seminar, in which case you’ll only be able to pick 4 other classes for your major/certificates, so keep that in mind. The thing about ELE is that it’s an engineering degree, so freshman year you’ll have to take introductory courses in physics, math, chemistry, and computer science, unless you place out with AP credit or via the placement test, so that’s something to bear in mind as well. Course selection is an imperfect process - many students each semester don’t get into 1 or more of their classes due to size constraints or scheduling conflicts, so best of luck to you.
@CocoaKing my son is a BSE (class of 2020 ORFE major). His advisor looked at his records and let him take 5 courses, it’s that simple. He did test out of all BSE pre-reqs due to his AP scores.
He like taking 5 classes in fall and 4 in spring (less time off in spring semester).
Hi @CocoaKing - To answer your question, it is not difficult for BSE students to gain approval to take 5 classes in fall semester. Additionally, in terms of planning ahead, certificate and major requirements are all published online, so you might want to make a tentative plan for your next 4 years on an Excel spreadsheet. We suggest you submit your future questions to our Tumblr blog (realtalk-princeton), where real Princeton students have answered over 40,000 questions.