<p>Question regarding penn intouch and writing seminars... </p>
<p>Can/Should I list more than one writing seminar as a primary request? Being able to choose only one alternative doesn't seem like enough if the classes fill up quickly... but I don't want to end up being scheduled for two writing seminars on the off chance that both are open.</p>
<p>Thoughts? Haha, I'm confusing myself just thinking about it!</p>
<p>If you don’t get a writing seminar from advanced registration don’t worry about it. Stuff opens up during add/drop and you can take a writing seminar in any of your 7 other semesters at Penn. </p>
<p>To maximize your chances of a writing seminar it couldn’t hurt to put a few as your primary choices. What you could do is have your top two choices be writing seminars with writing seminar alternates. That would maximize your chances of getting one. Penn In Touch will sign you up for your first 4.5 credits though, so be sure to put a large class as your 5th choice like Psyc or Econ. Those will be easier to get into during Add/Drop and some even guarantee every student who wants to sign up a seat.</p>
<p>Don’t put too much stock in which writing seminar you take because most are easy classes that don’t really teach you too much.</p>
<p>Venkat</p>
<p>D had same issue yesterday, trying to figure out how to maximize her chances of getting a writing seminar. If you put the first 2 primary choices as Writing sems with 2 alternates for writing, you will have put down 4 possible ones. But as the OP says could you end up with 2 writing seminars?</p>
<p>Do you get around it by choosing both primaries that meet at the same time so that if you do get your first primary, the computer will automatically skip the 2nd primary writing?</p>
<p>Sorry if my question is confusing.</p>
<p>(PS - are really the writing seminars that bad? are you better off taking a freshman seminar in the fall? D wants to try a BFS seminar in spring; can you take 5.5 classes in spring without getting special permission in CAS)</p>
<p>You could end up with 2 writing seminars. Considering that a large number of freshmen end up with 0 writing seminars from advanced registration, it probability of having 2 is near 0 and it will be easy to drop it and pick up a different 4th class compared to getting your first choice writing seminar if it is full after advanced registration. It’s not worth trying to find a way around accidentally getting signed up for 2 writing seminars (unless all 4 meet at the same time or have the exact same course number like Engl 009). There are far worse things that can happen in advanced registration.</p>
<p>Writing seminars aren’t bad and I enjoyed mine. However, they aren’t anything special in general. Most people I know felt that they were a waste of time. They are good to take first semester freshman year because they are easy courses that help get you in the mindset of writing frequently in college. They don’t really prepare you for college writing. In a writing seminar you write formulaic essays which are probably not used too often in history or english or any other college stubject.</p>
<p>If your daughter sees a freshman seminar that really interests her and has a good professor, but doesn’t see any worthwhile writing seminars, she is better off taking a freshman seminar first semester and a writing seminar later. If she doesn’t see any seminars, freshman or writing or BFS, that interest her (and she’s not BFS) then she doesn’t need to take any freshman year. You can take 5.5 classes in the spring without special permission. Some advisors will raise your max courseload to stuff like 7 or 8 credits to give you ultimate freedom.</p>
<p>I read that they’re restructuring the writing seminars this fall to make them more uniform across classes (i.e. last semester the amount of work my friends and I had to put in to our respective writing classes varied quite a bit since we had different profs) and to teach more research-paper-writing skills…so hopefully the classes will get better and/or teach more useful skills.</p>
<p>Honestly it’s been pretty uniform with regard to written assignments; different teachers/professors give you a different amount of reading.</p>