<p>“Also, I’ve heard that when you register for classes it’s a good idea to know which professors teach the subject well. Will advisers help us with this? or will it just be whichever classes are open or sound appealing?”</p>
<p>Sometimes advisers are familiar with the classes you’ll be considering, but more often not (it’s a huge university, no one can know everybody who teaches here). If you are truly determined to find out which professors are best, there are several methods:</p>
<h2>You can stop at the department office and ask which courses are most popular (keeping in mind that no one is going to admit that a particular class is UNpopular), or look through the syllabi they keep on file to see whether readings, layout, topics, etc. appeal to you.</h2>
<h2>You can either (as Barrons suggests) enroll in extra courses and decide which to drop after the first few classes, or just sit in on the first day of additional classes and decide whether you want to sign up/get on waiting list for the course. Careful, though: if you are planning on enrolling in extra courses and dropping them, make sure you know the drop dates. When I was an undergrad students could drop throughout the first two weeks, but drops during the second week were noted on the permanent transcript (not a huge deal, but better to avoid).</h2>
<p>You can seek online evaluations by past students. <a href=“http://www.ratemyprofessor.com%5B/url%5D”>www.ratemyprofessor.com</a> may be somewhat useful but sample size is often very small, the 200-word limit restricts detailed commentary (you’ll know that someone liked/disliked the teacher, but not necessarily why), and voluntary rating is more prone to personal compliments and attacks. A much more representative gauge is the compilation of university-administered, official teaching evaluations available at <a href=“http://www.asm.wisc.edu/evals/evals.html[/url]”>http://www.asm.wisc.edu/evals/evals.html</a></p>
<p>I strongly recommend going through the timetable at <a href=“http://registrar.wisc.edu/timetable/fall/[/url]”>http://registrar.wisc.edu/timetable/fall/</a> and graduation requirements before coming to SOAR. Course availability is likely to be a big factor in which classes you take, so have a number of classes picked as alternatives.</p>