<p>My daughter took two freshman seminars, one in the fall, one in the spring. She also took an intro Physics seminar for potential Physics majors (Physics 006) – that one is not an “official” first-year seminar even though it met once a week for three hours and was capped at 12 students, just like a FYS.</p>
<p>Here’s how I would recommend tackling course selection: Sit down with the catalog and skim through the departments. Make a list of your potential majors and other departments with interesting courses.</p>
<p>If you have five or six potential majors, list the requirements for each one on a piece of paper. You want to preserve as many of these as options as possible with your freshman course selection. For example, if Physics is a potential major, then you know that Physics and Calc will be two of your first-year courses. You would take the pre-req 006 seminar rather than the 001 first-year seminar. Or, if you are thinking Poli Sci, then you should be planning to take one of the pre-req courses. Etc. </p>
<p>Also make a list of courses that you would like to “dabble” in at Swathmore. For example, you may have no intention of being an Art History major, but you might want to take the Intro to Western Art for fun. So that would go on your “plan to take them sometime” list. You always want to have five or so courses from your “sometime” list in your hip pocket when you go to register – preferably including a couple large courses that won’t be lotteried. That way, if you get lotteried out of a course, you can just go to your “sometime” list and fill in the slot with “Intro to Western Art”, “Intro to Psych”, or whatever it may be.</p>
<p>I would also recommend making an honest evaluation of the writing preparation you received at your high school and based on that evaluation, giving serious consideration to the freshman writing course (Engl 001A – Insights into Academic Writing). It is not a required course, but four years at Swarthmore would be pretty tough without solid preparation for writing. If you went to Exeter, probably no sweat, you’ll get plenty of writing instruction in the “W” courses. But, if you went to an “average” public high school and feel like your writing background isn’t that strong, I would strongly recommend this course and the sooner the better.</p>
<p>As for freshman seminars: you want a list of perhaps a half-dozen in mind because the majority of the seminars will end up being lotteried, so odds are that, if you fall in love with one particular seminar, you won’t get it. For example, I guarantee that the “Fairy Tales” and “Jane Austen” seminars will be lotteried. I see that they added a second section of “Utopias”, as it was lotteried last year. I think my daughter ended up getting her third choice freshman-seminar last year, which worked out OK because she really enjoyed it and now plans to major in that department.</p>
<p>If you get lotteried out of all your seminar choices fall semester, you will have priority for a second-semester first year seminar. That is true of ANY course you get lotteried out of the first time around.</p>
<p>Just glancing at the list, the only professor that jumps out as being highly recommended is Cothren who is teaching the “Making Art History” seminar. Everyone who takes one of his classes LOVES him. Daughter took his “Intro to Western Art” his year and raved about the class. There are probably others on the list, but his name jumps off the page.</p>
<p>You can check the class times at the Tri-Co Course Listing:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.trico.haverford.edu/cgi-bin/courseguide/cgi-bin/search.cgi[/url]”>http://www.trico.haverford.edu/cgi-bin/courseguide/cgi-bin/search.cgi</a></p>
<p>Just select Fall 05, Swarthmore, and the department name.</p>