<p>I'm a little confused about the classes you take at UPenn, especially the foundation approaches. So from the seven sectors you take one class, and from each foundation you take one class? As well as freshman seminars? And you don't declare your major until spring of your sophomore year?</p>
<p>Can anyone who goes to UPenn answer some of these questions? Thanks.</p>
<p>So it appears you’re in the College. Here’s how your classes work.</p>
<p>Classes can be broken into these groups:</p>
<p>Major
Sector
Foundational Approach
Free Elective</p>
<p>Major classes are, obviously, any courses that count toward your major (regardless of when you declare that major).
Sector requirements are outlined on a webpage somewhere on the College website. You may use one major course to fulfill a sector requirement (for example, I used PSCI183, American Political Thought, to fulfill a political science requirement AND to fulfill my History and Tradition sector requirement). If you double-major, two courses can go toward the sectors; if you triple major, the number is three.
Foundational approach courses are a little more open. Most of those requirements are one course only (the exception is the language requirement, which is up to four courses for a true language novice). You can double count as many foundational approaches as you want with sector requirements and/or major requirements. For example, I double-counted my ASTR001 (Survey of the Universe) course for the Physical World sector AND the quantitative data analysis foundational approach.
Free electives are any courses that don’t fit into the above buckets. </p>
<p>Freshman seminars might fulfill a requirement, or they might not. They are no different from any other courses at Penn, except that they are limited to freshmen only and are generally small courses. There is no requirement that you take a freshman seminar (I never did). As for major declaration, I declared mine during the fall of sophomore year. I declared a second major during my junior year, and I undeclared it during my senior year.</p>