<p>Which freshman critical writing seminars would you guys recommend? I was inclined towards to globalization of hiphop or kick out the jams just based on the descriptions, do you guys know anything about these?</p>
<p>Food for thought is supposed to be the best, but really, anything with a good professor will be fine. Anything with a bad/obnoxiously tough professor will be terrible. Look at Penn Course Review to see which professors get good ratings.</p>
<p>bump (10char)</p>
<p>I totally agree with Venkat on this - use course review. Most of these seminars are the easiest classes you will take, but there are a couple of professors that haven't got that memo and will make your suffer while all your friends are laughing at you.</p>
<p>is course review like ratemyteachers? could someone explain?
also, where do you find it</p>
<p>there's a link on penn portal. it's like ratemyteachers but only for Penn. Take it with a grain of salt, but in my experience it's been fairly accurate.</p>
<p>Just a friendly tip for the future - you can find almost every site you need via Google. Here, try Googling "Penn Course Review" and see what comes up. Once you see it, it kind of speaks for itself.</p>
<p>I chose my writing seminar based on PCR ratings and I'm so, so, so glad I did. But also take into account the content. I liked my seminar because it was easy, but I loved it because of the content.</p>
<p>One more thing - don't feel pressured to take your seminar in the fall. I really wanted to take 2-3 ones that I didn't get into so I waited until the spring and got into one that was perfect.</p>
<p>so you guys recommend a course with a really low difficulty rating like 1 ish or 2 ish?</p>
<p>^Actually, I'd recommend a class with a professor and course rating above 3. A low difficulty is a plus, but personally, I've found it easier to try more with a good professor and you might underachieve in an easy class with a bad professor.</p>
<p>How do we decipher the course review ratings? I mean, of course I understand it's a gradual scale from 1-4 but... if my class difficulty is 2, how much work is the class?/how frustrated are people with the class? (I'm not even sure what goes into factoring difficulty) Likewise, what's a number that distinguishes an average professor from a good one?</p>
<p>And I guess bias in the size of the sample has to be considered too? A lecture professor's numbers might not be as extreme as a professor's for a class of 10?</p>
<p>Generally I view 3 as the cutoff for everything. Courses with difficulty<3 are usually really easy and professors>3 are very good. Also check out the return rate on the survey. A low return usually tells you how many people are going to that class at the end of the semester.</p>