<p>Since we're allowed to make a change, when is the best time to take a writing seminar, in the fall or the spring? '08ers, when did you take your seminar and were you happy taking it that semester?</p>
<p>you can make a change?
how? when? </p>
<p>It depends on what courses you want to take. I would take it in the fall, since I can take only one math course and one physics course (the others are overlaping) and I would take more math and physics in the spring. It all depends...</p>
<p>Yea, i would go for a fall one as well..but thats because i want to take a FRS in the spring, dont want two seminars in a single semester :)</p>
<p>I hear that BSE students generally get assigned the seminar in the fall so they can get it over with and get on with more engineering reqs.</p>
<p>actually i read on the writing seminar (or freshman seminar, tho i think it was the former) page that students ought not be wary of taking both in the same semester and actually...that it's a good idea, so check it out. i'm def pushin for my writing seminar to be this fall (which i never thought i'd do but then again i didnt anticipate falling in love with one of the offerings for this fall) and i think i'm goign to try to get a frs both semesters, so..yeah</p>
<p>It is much better/easier to take the writing seminar in the fall. That is because you have more breaks in the fall semester to write your papers. Fall break, Thanksgiving, winter break. In the spring, the semester goes right into reading period with no break. Also, taking the seminar in the fall is useful b/c you can use the skills learned in the seminar the entire year in other classes.</p>
<p>I actually want mine in the spring because I'd really love to take this English course in the fall. ENG 203. I'm not sure they offer it in the spring; they didn't have it at all last year so I don't want to miss out. I also want to take a freshman seminar second semester so yea...
There's too much I want to take and not enough time!
Is it suicidal to take 5 courses, with two of them being languages?</p>
<p>Don't take 5 courses in the fall. Don't ever take 5 courses in the same semester as a writing seminar. Some people feel that the writing seminar counts as 1.5 courses in its workload etc. </p>
<p>The reason why ENG203 wasn't offerred last year is b/c the english department renumbered some of its courses this year. When the new UA comes out in September you will be able to figure out which courses will be offerred in the spring.</p>
<p>Thanks for the tip about 5 courses joel! I as in the same boat as zant.. deciding whether to take 5 courses in fall or not. Do you think it's manageable to take 5 if one of the courses is a little less demanding, like creative writing or art?</p>
<p>or a freshman seminar?</p>
<p>I have two thoughts on this.</p>
<p>First, I would suggest taking your writing seminar in spring. Writing seminars change from year to year, and it would be a good idea to wait it out, so that when <em>you</em> have to enroll, you'll have the advice of fellow '09ers to trust, instead of rather blindly signing up for what will probably be a large committment for you.</p>
<p>Second, I disagree with those who say not to take the writing seminar with five classes. Yes, you have four essays, and yes, you have to update your work and are checked-on more frequently in the writing seminar than in other classes, but really, it's not that difficult. The grades in writing seminars are pegged to a degree, anyway, so unless you just write the worst essay ever you shouldn't get less than a B- on any of the essays. With the schedules most of you will take spring semester, five courses with a writing seminar shouldn't be too terrible, I don't think. The only exceptions to this are:</p>
<ul>
<li><p>Don't take a writing seminar in fall if you're taking HUM 216/217 (having heard from my classmates, I know this -- fortunately -- second-hand). Spring semester is easier in the HUM sequence, though.</p></li>
<li><p>Be cautious taking a writing seminar with five classes if you're taking more advanced science classes. I haven't taken any of the following courses, but I think that taking something like Orgo, MAT 215?, PHY 105, MOL 214, and the like, along with a writing seminar and four other courses wouldn't be the greatest idea.</p></li>
</ul>
<p>To get where I'm coming from, this spring I took:</p>
<p>HUM 218
HUM 219
WRI 134 ("Watching War from Home," taught by Gloria Fisk, who is all right. She is teaching a writing seminar called "Small World" this fall. The class wasn't very difficult.)
ENV 402 (A seminar where we read four of Darwin's major works)
AST 203 ("The Universe," an easy QR.)</p>
<p>With this schedule, between HUM and ENV, I had a lot of readings but managed to stay alive. I P/D/F'ed AST 203 and got a P in it without too much effort.</p>
<p>has anyone figured out the scg? i guess that because the fresh. seminars change from year to year, there are no reviews for this year's seminars... also, there are no reviews for many of the classes i'm interested in (even when i search back to past years). am i missing something?</p>
<p>
[quote]
am i missing something?
[/quote]
No. Some classes just don't have reviews. If you're lucky, you might find a review for the course you're looking at that was written in 1997 or 1996 (a little outdated). </p>
<p>Why doest the Student Course Guide list reviews for the freshman seminars, because even though seminars change each year, some offered this year have been offered before!</p>
<p>Tunan - I had also heard the suggestion to take the writing seminar in spring instead of fall, and hence I started the thread. Are spring seminars (for writing) exactly the same as the fall ones, because then it would make sense to wait for the spring and hear how the fall seminars went.</p>
<p>There is some turnover from semester to semester, but a lot of the writing seminars (like 70%, if not more) are the same from Fall --> Spring. If you look at the writing seminar selections from previous years, you can generally figure out which seminars have been offered consistently for the last couple of cycles.</p>
<p>With regard to the SCG, for some reason, they don't have reviews of freshman seminars or writing seminars. If you're having trouble finding info about a particular course, I would suggest that you look for it in past years, past semesters, search for it, and, failing with all of that, look up the professor's name. You may not find info about the particular course, but if the professor is a dud, that will help to inform you. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that you can also go by "Evaluation Statistics" to gauge what a course will be like, or, if you find absolutely no information, go to <a href="http://www.ratemyprofessors.com%5B/url%5D">www.ratemyprofessors.com</a> to look up a particular professor. Another method I figured out recently is to go to Blackboard and look up the course on there. Doing this, you can often times check out syllabi, lecture notes, and take-home tests for the class.</p>
<p>Also, as per the SCG, there have been a ton of technical problems with the SCG over the last two years. There are basically no SCG reviews for Spring 2005 or Fall 2004 or Spring 2004. There are no reviews for Fall 2005, for the most part. The best way to use the SCG is to type the course # you want to look for into the search box and it will pull up previous reviews going back to 1997. There are no reviews for FRS or WRI. Since the WRI courses change each year, but the professors stay the same, your RCA might have a review of some of the WRI professors during the first week of school. Also, in all honesty you probably are not going to get your first choice WRI seminar. When you sign up you rank your top 8 seminars and they try to place you into one of the 8. I got my 5th choice seminar and many of my friends did not get their first choice seminar.</p>
<p>Can you take a course p/f and still fulfill a distribution requirement with it?</p>
<p>you can PDF a class and fulfill a distribtuion requirement with it. Use FRS to fulfill distribution requirements. Also, there are usually some "gut" courses for each distribution requirement that you can take.</p>
<p>Does that also apply to labs?</p>
<p>yes
one of my STs was a freshman seminar called "sound, music and physics"
it was the easiest course i have taken at princeton. every week the seminar was 1 hour lecture and 1 hour lab. we got out 1 hour early. we didn't have lab writeups or a grade for our labs. our grade for the course consisted of a midterm given in class that took 20 minutes to do. it was identical to the practice midterm we had gotten the week before. and a final paper of 6 pages on ANY topic you wanted that was in someway related to physics, music or both. </p>
<p>cee102B is also a really easy ST course.</p>