Smith's strongest majors?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Smith College
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<p>I've been admitted to Smith for fall 2010 but I don't know much about its strengths and weaknesses. Can anyone give me a rundown on Smith's strongest and weakest majors? And any other info that might be useful in my decision making process in general. </p>

<p>I have an interested in International Studies & studying abroad, as well as foreign language (specifically the Asian countries). I'm also considering Business/Marketing, but of course these are not set in stone at all and are just ideas that could change at any time. So, is Smith flexible enough to allow for drastic changes in major? (Basically, is Smith well rounded enough to accommodate those changes?)</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

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<p>Wow, your interests are pretty in line with mine, awesome :). I’m a Economics/East Asian Language and Culture double major at Smith, with the aim to go into International Corporate Law when I graduate.</p>

<p>Let me say straight off the bat, you won’t be able to design a Business or Marketing degree here at Smith. It just won’t happen, mainly due to the fact that neither department or anything comparable is offered at Smith. The closest you’ll probably get is an Economics major. Before I was admitted into Smith I was thinking around the business lines too, but I ended up switching to Economics after I came.</p>

<p>That being said, I personally feel like Economics is one of the strongest majors here at Smith. It’s one of the larger departments on campus and the professors are fabulous. You can search for old threads about the Econ department at Smith, but in general we get pretty rave reviews :slight_smile: We do offer tons of classes focused on the International Economy, so it’s pretty easy to focus all your electives on International Economics, and I believe we offer two or three seminars focused on International Economics as well.</p>

<p>Of course, if you want to study International Studies you may want to look into a Gov major. I don’t know much about the department but I’ve heard only positive things about it. I’m sure there’s somewhat else here that could explain it better than I could. We used to offer an International Relations minor, but I believe it’s being changed to a Five-College Certificate starting next year. I definitely think Econ and Gov are two of our strongest majors here.</p>

<p>As for the East Asian Language department, I’m not really sure what language you’re planning on taking but I currently take Japanese and I’m well acquainted with the Chinese Department as well. I absolutely LOVE our Japanese department here. The teachers are so nice and extremely helpful, you also learn A LOT. The Chinese department is equally as great. I haven’t taken a Chinese class before, but I know all the professors well since I’m active in the Chinese Community on campus. They’re extremely kind and often take their students out for meals/trips outside of class, the number of students taking Chinese is smaller as well I believe. That being said, our EAL department is extremely small in comparison to our Econ and Gov departments, so the number of classes offered is less. Also since the department is small you’re not allowed to simply major in “Japanese” or “Chinese,” but you’re required to take Literature courses as well (the minor is East Asian Language and Literature, although they switch to “Culture” in the major name it’s pretty much the same). </p>

<p>As for study abroad, I believe about half of our class studies abroad junior year. I’m currently planning on going to London next spring semester. However, if you do decide to go the Econ/East Asian route, you might wanna keep in mind that it’s extremely hard to find schools abroad that offer courses in both subjects. I had to make a choice between my two majors for JYA, and I chose to focus on Econ courses rather than EAL ones.</p>

<p>Wow, sorry for the novel, it’s almost 2AM and I tend to ramble… hopefully I answered some of your questions somewhere in there :).</p>

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<p>Smith is highly flexible, because you don’t have core requirements, you just take whatever classes are of interest to you, so you really have a chance to explore whatever you want and change it around quite a bit (unless you want to do engineering, because that has some more specific requirements). I think I changed major ideas five or six times: History, English, Economics, French, American Studies, I considered them all before deciding on Government. </p>

<p>Smith has a lot of very strong departments, I would say from the humanities side (with which I am most familiar) some of the biggest/most popular are Government, Economics, American Studies, and English. We also have a great Study of Women and Gender (swag, as it’s known on campus) department, religion is good, and I’ve heard positive things about the sociology and psychology departments (this is not a complete list and really based only on my impressions as a student, not/not empirical). </p>

<p>If you want to study IR then you’ll want to be a Gov Major. Government majors choose one area to focus in: International Relations, American Gov, Comparative Gov, or Political Theoary; though you have to take one course in each of the disciplines before you choose your specialty. I was IR focused with an extra emphasis on Middle Eastern studies, and I found the major excellent. It’s one of the biggest majors on campus, so you have lots of courses available and lots of AMAZING professors. Also, the Government department runs the “Semester-in-Washington” Program, where you spend a summer and a semester living in DC, doing a full-time internship and also taking grad-school style seminars at night while working on a long research paper on a topic of your choosing. It’s open to all majors, but the majority of people accepted into the program are Gov majors. </p>

<p>Additionally, you can minor specifically in International Relations and study something else, like Economics (you can also minor in Government). As Arashic already told you, there’s no business major at Smith because Business/Marketing, like accounting and nursing, are not liberal arts disciplines. </p>

<p>As for languages, the East Asian department is strong, as are the traditional romance language departments (French, Spanish, Italian) and German. Smith even has small but I think quite good Arabic language courses, I took them and loved them. And now they’ve begun a Middle Eastern studies minor, so that’s exciting.</p>

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<p>What about History?</p>

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<p>Lilbeebee, you can find a very recent thread, “History at Smith,” where the subject has been pretty thoroughly discussed. If after reading it, you still have questions, ask away on that thread.</p>

<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/smith-college/896263-history-smith.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/smith-college/896263-history-smith.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>thanks, i found that right after posting.</p>

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<p>Hi
I’ll be entering Smith in fall 2010 and I have a quick question about the Russian dept. At the moment, I am very interested in learning Russian, and I am debating the Russian Language and Literature major. However, I was reading through the forums and read that the russian courses are easy, or that students don’t learn a ton of russian? I have a lot different interests and so everything is really up in the air so far, but I know for sure exploring russian is one of my main goals after I enter college, that being said I am just curious as to how strong the dept is.
Thanks!</p>