<p>Hi, does anyone know of freshman courses that are easy A’s? I would rather not be too stressed out my first year there.</p>
<p>Thank you kindly.</p>
<p>Positive Psychology and the Psychology of Leadership (same professor) fit into that category, I believe. There aren’t really any “freshman courses” though, other than Expos and Freshman Seminars. Expos isn’t an easy A and you don’t have a choice about taking it, but all freshman seminars are pass/fail and lots of people absolutely love them.</p>
<p>Thanks for the info. I really appreciate it.</p>
<p>Taking a freshman seminar each semester is a good way to ease yourself in to Harvard work (as well as learn a lot in an intimate setting with a professor). It’s not too hard with the CUE guide and word of mouth to find out what’s easy and what isn’t… a lot of it depends on your background though.</p>
<p>Well, if you’re a freshmen who isn’t taking math 23/25/55, I would imagine 1ab/21ab wouldn’t be entirely difficult.</p>
<p>Yeah, positive and leadership psych (1504 and 1508) do have that reputation, but Tal is going on leave next year so they probably won’t be taught then. Just wait until you can access <a href=“http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cueguide[/url]”>http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cueguide</a> and go off of that.</p>
<p>Alex M. - I’ve heard from a lot of people that 1b/21a are pretty difficult. Not impossible or anything, but kind of tricky and anal, even if you have a 5 on BC.</p>
<p>1b made my roommate crazy and she got a 5 on BC in high school. Not recommended as an easy class.</p>
<p>Don’t make the CUE guide your bible, though. Upperclassmen have warned me, and I’ve found their experiences to be true, that their experiences with classes have been entirely opposite of what the CUE guide says. I wouldn’t rely on it very heavily. Your best bet is to shop classes like a crazy person when you get here. That’s really the best way to tell.</p>
<p>Find out what courses the football players are taking. Chances are, they get good advice.</p>
<p>lol ^^^ dont most atheltes major in pysch or sports medicine?</p>
<p>Harvard doesn’t have a sports medicine concentration. The stereotypical (with some truth to it) athlete concentrations are psychology, economics, and government. FM actually did a pretty interesting piece on athlete concentration choice:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503816[/url]”>http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=503816</a></p>
<p>What exactly is CUE?</p>
<p>Thanks.</p>
<p>The CUE Guide is a course evaluation guide that is published every year. At the end of the semester, students are asked to fill out evaluations about their courses, which are then compiled, quantified, and turned into a one page mini-review of the course.</p>
<p>Here’s an example (lets see if the formatting will work):
Ancient Near East 117
Biblical Archaeology
Half Course to be given in the Fall Term Lawrence E. Stager
Official Description: Ancient Near East 117 uses archaeology and texts, such as the Bible, to reconstruct aspects of social, economic, and religious life (from courtier to commoner) in ancient Israel during the Iron Age.</p>
<p>FALL Statistics: Enrollment: 3 undergrads out of 20 total Response: 15 (75.0%)
Course
Mean Fall Hum.
Mean 1 2 3 4 5 NA Total
Course overall 3.7 4.3 0 2 4 5 4 0 15
Professors:
Stager 3.2 4.5 2 1 5 4 2 0 14
Course engaging 3.3 3.3 0 5 4 2 4 0 15
Reading 3.7 4.4 0 1 7 3 4 0 15
Website 3.5 3.0 0 1 5 5 1 2 14
Workload 2.2 2.4 3 7 4 1 0 0 15
Difficulty 3.4 3.1 1 1 6 4 2 0 14
Competition 2.2 2.5 3 6 3 1 0 2 15
Pace 3.4 3.2 0 1 9 3 2 0 15
Assignments:
Relevance 3.2 4.4 0 5 2 4 2 1 14</p>
<p>First-Years: 0 Elective: 4
Sophomores: 0 Concentration: 9
Juniors: 2 Cores: 0
Seniors: 1 Pre-med: 0
Others: 11 </p>
<p>Requirements: 2003-2004: Midterm (15%), Section participation (20%), Term paper (20%), Final (45%).</p>
<p>Reading 2003-2004: King and Stager, Biblical Israel; Mazar, Archaeology of the Land of the Bible.</p>
<p>Instructor (13): Students describe Professor Lawrence E. Stager as knowledgeable (13%) but complain that his lectures are disorganized (46%) and difficult to follow (46%).</p>
<p>Section Leaders (14): Those polled consider section leaders knowledgeable (29%) and helpful (50%). Section leader Adam Aja receives especially high praise.</p>
<p>Sections (12): 42% of respondents claim that sections are integral to the course, and 25% describe them as helpful.</p>
<p>Reading (11): Although 27% of those surveyed feel that the reading is interesting, 27% believe that some of it is irrelevant, and 36% warn that too much is assigned.</p>
<p>Preparation (13): While some polless do not feel that any background is necessary (23%), others urge potential students to have knowledge of archaeology (31%) and familiarity with the Bible (62%).
Strengths/Weaknesses (12): Students cite the interesting material (25%) as the courses main strength and the disorganized lectures (67%) as its principal weakness.</p>
<p>Summary (11): 45% of those surveyed fully endorse Ancient Near East 117. 27%, however, recommend it conditionally, while 27% do not recommend it at all.</p>
<p>Note: This write-up is based on an evaluation conducted in Fall 2003, when the course was last offered.</p>
<p>CUE stands for the Committee on Undergraduate Education. Just about every class with more than a handful of students is listed in the online CUE guide, which provides detailed statistics and commentary on things like difficulty, workload, ability of the professor, makeup of the class, and course quality overall. The main problem with the CUE is understanding the bias of the students: required classes get lower ratings because people who aren’t interested in the subject end up taking them; a class that a math major would consider easy might get a tough rating because it’s in the economics department; courses held early in the morning can get high ratings because only the people who love the class will show up to lecture and the rest won’t rate the professor; and so on.</p>
<p>I guess a rating of 1=little and 5=lot? Or does 1=bad and 5=good?</p>
<p>Also, do you think Tal will be teaching 1st semester next year?</p>
<p>The number system can be kind of confusing, hence the oddities in the results sometimes. In general, we assume 1 is bad, 5 is good.</p>
<p>Tal is supposed to be gone all next year, but back the following year.</p>
<p>And just to clarify, the first number after each category is the mean for the course and the second number is the mean for all humanities courses offered that semester. The following numbers are the numbers of students who gave the course the ranking in each category (1-5), then the total number of students who voted in that category.</p>
<p>After that, there’s the breakdown of how many students in each year who took the class, along with why they say they took it (for their concentration, to fufill a core, etc.).</p>
<p>Positive psych is rated very low in difficulty and workload. So I guess most people think it’s too easy? But also, low ratings for difficulty could indicate too hard?</p>
<p>lindsey-But for difficulty, 5 is hard, and 1 is easy, right?</p>
<p>I’d always been under the impression that athletes had extra or special advising, but found out recently that this isn’t the case. So if there are “jock” classes, it happens purely by word of mouth.</p>
<p>Positive Psych has a reputation for being really easy.</p>
<p>Sorry, I think I explained the ratings wrong (again, why this can be confusing).</p>
<p>Okay, so if the difficulty rating is low, its easy.</p>
<p>If the workload rating is low, there’s not much workload. </p>
<p>If the professor gets a high rating, he’s a “good” professor. </p>
<p>If the competition rating is high, there is a lot of competition.</p>
<p>If the website rating is high, there’s a good website. </p>
<p>If the pace rating is high, it moves too quickly. </p>
<p>If the engaging rating is high, its very engaging.</p>
<p>I hope that makes more sense.</p>
<p>Thanks again for the info - very helpful.</p>
<p>Im also very pleased that my intended major (econ) is filled with jocks -> good curve :0).</p>