<p>I believe it is only offered in the spring, but check out CLPS 0510 (Perception, Illusion, and the Visual Arts). Fascinating subject matter, and remarkably easy to get an A.</p>
<p>Maybe I’m in the minority, but as long as I’m interested in the topic (and did a quick check with friends/Critical Review to make sure the professor isn’t ridiculously difficult), I find any humanities courses to be rather easy. I have yet to be in a writing-intensive (not necessarily WRIT, but paper-based) course that was hard to get an A in. Meanwhile, I have friends that end up with B’s in courses like ENGN9 because they don’t actually care about the material and have to scramble to study for the finals towards the end.</p>
<p>In my opinion, any course where the professor can watch your progress and help you along the way will either be an easy A or an “easy” A (meaning that the course may be challenging, but putting in the work will yield results that you want to see).</p>
<p>“Intro to sociology? Ecology? Education courses? These are traditional BS classes everywhere. No?”</p>
<p>“if he can find a 5th class that he both finds interesting and where he can get an A without being too distracted from his core classes, why not explore it?”</p>
<p>Lol. Nice change of tack. First time poster, or not, (as am I—argument from authority!) DeKimmel has your number. All pretense.</p>
<p>And when I think of intellectuals, web designers and computer scientists are not at the forefront. Nothing wrong with doing those things, if one needs a job, but let’s not conflate these things with humanistic, liberal, intellectual inquiry.</p>
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<p>Well, I see the ■■■■■ is now creating multiple accounts to pat himself on the back. He must be getting very hungry for attention.</p>
<p>Everyone else, thanks for some great ideas!</p>
<p>Its brown…so all the classes are easy As…lol, sorry that was just a grade inflation joke.</p>
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+1</p>
<p>tee hee</p>
<p>LoreumIpsum: as I’ve said to many, my advice in that situation (and I think he’s going to be a freshman?) is not to take a 5th class, especially year one.</p>
<p>At a lot of schools those lab courses count as 1.5 or 2x the credits of a humanities courses. Some people can take 5 of those classes a semester and kick ass, most of us cannot.</p>
<p>The “easy A” classes I know about are largely filler that probably won’t be all that stimulating. Intro to Russian Lit, Geo5, etc have a reputation for just being was that athletes can earn credits. Both of these courses have higher level classes that should be taken instead if you have a genuine interest in the material.</p>
<p>Far better to take a class that is really fascinating, regardless of difficulty and use SNC. No one I know at Brown ends up feeling they took too many classes SNC-- on the contrary, most wish they had taken far more.</p>
<p>LI’s son is a sophomore now.</p>
<p>I have a sneaking suspicion that folks are getting Geo 1 and Geo 5 confused. Geo 1 is “Face of the Earth”, which is the class i know to be “Rocks for Jocks”. Geo 5 is “Mars, Moon and the Earth”, which is a planetary geology class. It is by no means difficult, but I don’t think it’s a class athletes congregate to get an easy A.</p>
<p>aleph0:
My impression was always the non-22/23 track in Geo were pretty easy classes.</p>
<p>Geo 5 was probably on the easier end of the classes I took at Brown. But I didn’t notice any athlete congregation, nor did I find it a waste of time. I just wanted to correct that impression as someone who has taken the class.</p>
<p>I don’t recall anyone I know having difficulties with the intro to econ course, and that’s a field I wish I had explored a little bit more.</p>
<p>People with a mathematically-inclined brain may find Intro to Linguistics to be light in terms of workload and not overly demanding in terms of grading as well…but not everyone finds it that way. I also really disliked the class, mostly because of the instructor’s approach.</p>
<p>Although I never took a course S/NC, that’s always a possibility for a 5th course, too, since this allows one to worry less about the difficulty and focus more on something that’s interesting.</p>
<p>As someone who took 5 courses in 6 of my 8 semesters with about half of them in Math, Applied Math, and Computer Science, though…the free time may be more valuable. CS33 is much more work than 15-16 or 17-18, timewise, for example, though I don’t know what changes will be made this year - several of the projects were much longer or more difficult than expected and had to be changed.</p>
<p>I am honored to have gotten feedback from both Modestmelody and Uroogla, two of CC’s finest-ever Brown reps. Curiously, both of you engaged me two years ago in a different Brown thread about the hardest courses.</p>
<p>I’m not a good brown rep? :(</p>
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<p>I do. I know one student who failed. And not for stupid things like not doing assignments.</p>
<p>Back in the day, there was an intro to Econ that was for non-majors, very basic, and that one was practically impossible to fail. (The course number was Econ 1.) But it’s been eliminated, and Econ 110 is more math based and a requirement for majors. If you’re good at math you’ll do fine. If math is not your thing, this class is most definitely not an easy A, or even an easy B.</p>
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<p>Of course you are, i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown. But you aren’t truly missed until you go into semi-retirement – right now we’re still taking you for granted. ;)</p>
<p>Hahaha. Ok. Thats fair. This addiction is pretty strong and I don’t see it breaking any time soon.</p>
<p>How much writing is really involved in Barrett Hazeltine’s ENG 9 class? My son’s looking at this as a possible 5th class. We looked at Brown’s class/professor review portal and the number of average weekly hours was pretty low, but it seemed like there was a 3-page paper due every week. My son’s a good writer, but he’s quite slow at it, since he tends to over-research, writes very concisely on point and then struggles to add more to meet a length requirement.</p>
<p>About anyone who puts a modicum of effort and interest into ENGIN 9 will do quite well. And for most students it is actually a really interesting course. My student (science concentrator) loved it and ended up TAing the next semester. Hazeltine is taking a sort of back seat now, but the co teachers taking over the reigns have been “reigned in” by him in their efforts to try to make it “harder”. Just having taken a Hazeltine course is sort of part of the Brown fellowship in future years. (Like having been at Brown “with Ruth” will be.) Having also been a Hazeltine student long ago, (and a TA, although I took ENG 6 (not offered for many years), as well as a small seminar class with him) my student had lots of Brown alums besides me urging to have the “Hazeltine” experience. </p>
<p>Other “lighter load” classes to balance out some tough courses can often be something that you are very interested in or have some foundation that other students might not have. My Brown student took econ (a math lover) and found the course others found tough, an easy one due to calculus grounding. Considered a double concentration and then found the next econ courses with less math boring. Also had “fun” with a language class that already had a lot of background in, but not enough to really be in the next level up. Again was doing something actually interested in learning more about.
If one is a good writer (sounds like easily writing might be not so easy for your son, but these often attract a number of “non writers”) many of the the “narrow themed” lit classes in comp lit or English or even language depts (the ones in translation) can be “fun” classes, but he should pick ones he truly enjoys the topic of. The sci fi one is popular. During shopping period many of the profs will outline what they are going to expect re number of papers including length, number of books (and you can look up how long to gauge your reading commitment) to help decide what fits the schedule in terms of other course work. Shopping a few alternatives is the perfect way to pick up the “fun courses” outside of a concentration.</p>