- Directed Studies: Literature
- Directed Studies: Philosophy
- Directed Studies: Historical and Political Thought
- Elementary Modern Chinese I
- BIOL 101-102
I had a daughter in Directed Studies. It is like drinking from a firehose in the first semester. You should take 4, not 5, courses, in your first semester so drop either the Chinese or the Biology course. I think that is what your advisors will also suggest to you. You can increase your course load to 5 after you have the first semester under your belt. Either that or take the Chinese course pass/fail since I presume you are taking Biology as part of a science major or pre med course and need it to be a graded course.
Ouch. That’s six credits, one of which is a lab, right? (Chinese was double credit last I knew). DS has a reputation for a harder-than-typical load, and 4 is not an uncommon course load for the first semester.
The current iteration of the Blue Book says that Chinese is now only 1.5 credits, so 5.5 credits - conveniently the maximum permitted without your Dean signing off. You could drop Bio 102 for the second half of the term if the workload got to be too much and still have the half credit for 101, but if you don’t take Chinese in the second semester, you don’t get credit for any of the first semester.
I think it’s not too much to shop, but I would be astonished if it were a workable load to keep. So think about what your plan is if you need to drop one or more of them, and prioritize the others even before the drop decision is made.
I took 6 credits (2 of which were Chinese) spring term of my junior year, and survived. But the rest of my classes were relatively light, and I read much faster than most people.
@BlubInTheTub As I remember, you will need to get somewhere between three and four advisors to sign off on your schedule as a first year. They will all be resistant to any schedule with more than 4 classes for first semester.
Back at the dawn of Time, my freshman advisor was a chaplain who had been a Chinese major. He was really pushing the intellectual and social benefits of studying Mandarin, and I was definitely interested. He said, however, (a) I essentially had to choose between DS and Chinese, it would be a bad idea to do both, and (b) I would really have to take Mandarin for three or four years to access the full benefit of studying it. Ultimately, I opted for DS. It was fine; you make choices in life.
My advisor was probably a little extreme, but you should really think hard about taking five courses that are as time-consuming as those. Into Bio and Chinese are both extremely time-consuming, and their schedules will not necessarily be so flexible. With Chinese, you really have to do the language practice and class every day. And there’s a ton of pure memorization in both classes.
You don’t get points in college for pulling off stunts like this schedule. And you don’t (or shouldn’t) want to miss out on some of the great things that make Yale Yale: the lectures, the art museum, making friends, theater, music.
My son has few regrets about his time at Yale. He wanted to take Math 230 freshman year, even though he had minimal experience with proof-based math. It’s a notoriously difficult course, but entering students sometimes can’t resist the urge to drink from a firehose.
Ultimately, he felt that he was “behind” socially because of all the time he spent on that course. Nothing fatal, he caught up, but many great friendships are made early.
OP, good luck.
While my son (a rising senior) is in a different major at Yale, I have noticed that the exceedingly high performance level of his peers is a huge factor in raising the bar of how much greater effort the college experience requires than from anything prior. There have been instances where the mean of a test was 93/100. Everyone is brilliant. During his eye opening freshman year when he got a B+ in a class he thought he aced, he learned to adjust and accept this new challenge. Along the way he has balanced playing a Yale varsity sport, studied abroad, and explored new interests outside his major. They figure it out. Yale offers unique opportunities which absolutely should be pursued. Four years will go by in the blink of an eye.
I’d take the 3 DS courses and just one “known to be light” course for which you’ll use shopping period.
After that Fall semester, you could take 5 in the Spring, and 5.5 from Sophomore year on.