<p>i have NO idea what to choose.</p>
<p>im in the lib. arts program, and i dont know what major i wanna do...what would be the best choices for me?</p>
<p>I would also like to hear what people think of the different advising programs.</p>
<p>I did a Perspectives class which was a lot of fun. It's a great opportunity to take a fun, easy class. You get to know the other kids in your advising group really well and if you're lucky you have two cool upperclassmen to show you the ropes of registration and bring you to parties. The downside of course is that you get an advisor who may know nothing about your major. But it's fine if you're undecided, or if you'll just be taking general intro classes anyways. I had a polisci advisor, and even though I knew I was going to major in bio, he was still totally helpful and knew his stuff. The only work you have to do for perspectives is a ten page paper at the end, but some of the classes split it up into two 5-page papers instead. And the class meets once a week for 3 hours, but you just watch movie clips and talk, and my peer leaders always brought food. I definitely recommend Perspectives if you find a topic that interests you.</p>
<p>Did you take that class in addittion to your 4/5 normal classes?</p>
<p>Perspectives counts as a full credit, and I took 4 credits total my first semester. I took perspectives, french, calc and bio 13. I wanted a lighter schedule because I had heard bio 13 was so hard. It ended up being not so bad so I had it pretty easy and took 5 credits the next semester.</p>
<p>You found bio 13 to be not that bad? Impressive.</p>
<p>What does your advisor/advising group do?</p>
<p>Well, all you HAVE to do is go to class with your group, but I know a lot of people become really good friends with fellow advisees and hang out all the time, go to parties together, go out to dinner as a group. Your advisor is supposed to be the one who makes sure that you're fulfilling all the requirements. You can't register until the advisor approves the courses that you're taking. Basically it's to make sure you don't do stupid **** like forget about the World Civ requirement or sign up for only 3 credits. They want to make sure you're on track.</p>
<p>But since I was in Perspectives, yeah, my advisor was a French professor who had no idea about Poli Sci/IR/Econ requirements, and knew even less about transferring credit from the courses I planned on taking at Columbia this summer. She kept referring me to various professors WITHIN the language department that were transfer of credit representatives. It was only when I was complaining to my mom that it wasn't my fault that I wasn't get my transfer of credit requests approved so loudly on the phone that my friend Sara came outside and was like, what are you talking about? It's the easiest thing ever and you can do it online, it took me five minutes. However, I really really really liked my Public Opinion and Foreign Policy professor (Eichenberg...I advise anyone interested to take that class, b/c he does his research in this field and is really an expert...all the other experts are always quoting him in the reading, and on the backs of various books it's always like, HIM quoted as praising it) and he was glad to be my major advisor, so now I have an advisor within the Poli Sci department that can help me out with those requirements.</p>
<p>However, if I had taken Econ and IR freshman year like most freshman IR majors do, I probably would have never gotten to know the professor so well. So I think I personally would have preferred to have host advising with someone from my own major. But if you're really interested in the class itself that's offered by Perspectives or Explorations, go for it!</p>
<p>But you can't choose your advisor if you do host advising...so it's not like you would get somebody from your own major. That is my biggest problem, I need an advisor from the science department.</p>
<p>this advisor is only your pre major advisor.
I believe that it will change when you formally declare at Tufts.
You get to pick your own advisor when you do that.</p>
<p>really? the people i know have advisors from their own major when they chose Host...but many are engineers</p>
<p>Well Engineers have only a few advising options for that reason. Their set of requirements requires them to have a relevant advisor much earlier I believe. However, my friend who entered Tufts as an undeclared person got a Computer Programming advisor, she is going to be an English manjor and she's been told that when she declares she gets to choose whatever faculty member she wants to be her advisor.</p>
<p>I require a relevant advisor much earlier also because i'm applying early decision to vet school halfway through my sophomore year...before I declare a major!! Nobody I call knows how to help me though...so I'm not going to have the right advisor!</p>
<p>I don't think it's too big a deal. I mean, an advisor just goes over requirements with you and whatnot (i think, though maybe someone who's actually met with an advisor could better answer this part) You can do that yourself just by going on the department websites. I'm sure there are probably websites geared towards students who are going to vet school. Also, whatever advisor you're going to get will be able to do what they need to, even though they may not specifically be in the same program as you. </p>
<p>Either way it's not like you can't contact people in the Vet department if you need help. I emailed a professor from the community health department the other day and she promptly answered my questions. </p>
<p>To be honest I think that people could function without too much help from advisers.
I may be wrong but I feel as though many students could probably design their own schedules as long as they did the reading to look into their requirements.</p>
<p>Either way good luck. If you selected host advising hopefully they'll place you with someone in your program based on the answers you put in the survey.</p>
<p>You've obviously got a lot of drive if you're going into that field so whatever happens I'm sure it'll work out. </p>
<p>Incase you need them here are some important links
Course Listing
<a href="http://webcenter.studentservices.tufts.edu/courses/main.asp%5B/url%5D">http://webcenter.studentservices.tufts.edu/courses/main.asp</a></p>
<p>Departments
<a href="http://inside.tufts.edu/tuftslinks/view.php?cid=146%5B/url%5D">http://inside.tufts.edu/tuftslinks/view.php?cid=146</a></p>
<p>General Requirements of Undergraduates
<a href="http://ase.tufts.edu/bulletin/liberal-info.html%5B/url%5D">http://ase.tufts.edu/bulletin/liberal-info.html</a></p>
<p>Hopefully some of that will help.
Again, good luck!</p>
<p>seriously, it's really not that big a deal. it FEELS like a big deal b/c at present, it's one of the only things you get to decide on so it seems extremely important, but once I got to college I realized that I could figure out what requirements I have to fill on my own (and you really SHOULD, because it makes registration a lot easier...my first semester, my advisors didn't make it clear to me that my classes were supposed to fill certain requirements and I ended up taking a few classes that didn't fill any.), I saw that my advisor just needed to approve my choices and make sure that I was filling the right requirements needed to graduate.</p>