How is Williams College?

frozen203
Mon, 18 Jun 2012 22:00:12 +0000

I guess the 1st reply (of mine) kind of ignited this whole argument which is not beneficial to OP for his purpose. So, let me reroute the thread to its original path with these semi-secret feedbacks (only available to students) that students made for other students about their instructors. At Williams, we call it Factrak. Each division is represented by two departments, each by 2 anonymous professors of my choice (randomly chosen if I never take courses in the department); I will pick the latest feedback for each prof.
A. Division 1 (Language):
1. English:
- 300 lv: Don’t count on her to respond to your emails, show up to office hours, or lead a fruitful discussion. She is approachable, nice, and definitely knowledgeable about the material, but her lack of organization skills completely cloud these merits. Perhaps if you approach her on a good day in office hours, you will catch a scintillating moment of brilliance, but in my opinion, it’s not worth it. I went into the class excited about the reading list, and I came out completely disappointed.
- 200 lv: I took the memoir workshop with *** . On the one hand, I always enjoyed coming to class. Professor *** is witty, energetic, and great at leading discussions and I was never bored. The readings we got were so interesting that it was hard to believe they were homework (I sometimes would do them as a way to procrastinate for other classes). She definitely challenged me as a writer and a literary critic. On the other hand, there were times when I felt extremely limited by her narrow definition of “memoir” and forced to write something that was exactly what she wanted. She is extremely opinionated. I often felt as though her comments, though extensive, were more of a psychoanalysis than constructive criticism about my writing, which left me confused about what I should do to edit. And there were days when our class discussions felt more like gossip than anything of intellectual value and I left feeling frustrated (though admittedly entertained). The workload was very reasonable, really just 20 pages of writing the whole semester and about 10-30 pages of reading per class. She was always willing to meet outside of class (and her dog is very cute), but she talks a lot and sometimes its hard to interrupt and ask the questions that you came to office hours to get the answers to. All in all, it was a fun class, but I can definitely see how you might find Shepard to be a frustrating prof.
2. Spanish:
- 200 lv: so lucky to have had two classes with her at williams. best professor i have had at williams. truly phenomenal.
- 100 lv: I came into Professor 's Span 104 class from 103 with Prof. , and it was such a difference; 104 was definitely less challenging than 103. speaks pretty rapidly and is always quick to correct you whenever you make a mistake in speaking, which I really liked, I thought it was helpful. clearly enunciates everything and sometimes will not correct you when you make small mistakes, which is nice of him but not so great for really mastering the spoken language. In terms of class format, I really liked how *** has a lot of class discussion and conversation; every class we broke up into groups multiple times to discuss an question or work on a problem set. *** is also very accessible and quite helpful. I wasn’t such a fan of how his quizzes were always focused on the most recent material, and were never comprehensive. The homework exercises were pretty useful, though always very easy. We had 1st draft essays once every other week, which you were given a grade on and then had to rework to a final essay that was regraded higher according to your improvement. In summary, *** 's class sometimes felt a little more like high school than college Spanish, but because all the students (unlike high school) are actually engaged and interested in the material, I do feel like I learned a lot and improved my Spanish.

B. Division 2 (Social studies):
1. Political science:
- 200 lv: You won’t get terribly excited about Professor , but you won’t be disappointed, either. She picks interesting readings, is interested in what you have to say about it, and makes attempts to foster class discussion. Her lectures are not terrific, and yes, I sometimes wished an hour and fifteen minutes could pass a little faster. But they’re no total bore, either. Outside of class, she’s nice, accessible, and takes her time for students. A solid class all around.
- 200 lv: Professor is a fantastic professor. Before I took his class, I used to feel embarrassed and ignorant when global politics came up in conversations with my friends or family. I never felt like I had anything useful to say about nuclear weapons. Iran/Israel, the Arab Spring, etc. I didn’t understand the background of the issues and I wasn’t able to use theoretical or historical examples to formulate my arguments. 's class taught me how to formulate my own convictions. is a pro at leading class discussions-- he makes students feel confident and appreciated and challenged all at the same time in his informal lectures. In office hours *** will play devil’s advocate, but this was for the most part a good thing. He ended up making his final optional, which was nice. Only two papers for the class, though, which was tough because your first grade determines so much of your final grade. Overall, though, I strongly suggest you take a class with ! Great guy!
2. Economics:
- 100 lv: Downsides: His tests are challenging. Upsides: Everything else. Prof. is an unbelievably nice and enthusiastic man who genuinely wants his students to succeed. This former board member for the Federal Reserve still somehow manages to get himself jumping up and down over interest rates and capital inflows. His understated sense of humor and ability to explain complex ideas makes him one of my favorite professors at Williams. Yes his tests are difficult but that doesn’t make them unfair. He asks that students take what they should know and apply it to more complex ideas. I wish that I could take every class, econ or not, with Prof. *** , and I genuinely believe that everyone should take 120 with him.
- 200 lv: In the end I would say this was a decent class. He was ok at conveying the concepts and at explaining the models, despite being generally unorganized while using old projection slides that are hard to see and not very informative. He does provide you with a course packet with all of the slides however, which makes it very easy to follow lectures in class, and to review material afterwards. My biggest problems with the class were the problem sets and the exams. The questions he asked were often very wordy and broad, requiring a very long answer that would basically go over the entire concept being tested. I thought this was an unnecessary amount of work for problem sets, which often were over ten pages long, with questions needing more than a full page to answer at times. His test questions were of the same format, lengthy and broad, yet he severely constricted the time given to answer them. I don’t think anybody in the class thought they had adequate time to take his exams. The class is definitely frustrating at times, but I do believe I learned a lot from it. Compared to 's class (basing this on conversation with several people in the other class), 's class is more mathematical and less conceptual, less interesting but probably a bit more advanced in macroeconomic models.

C. Division 3 (natural science):
1. Biology:
- 100 lv: Prof. *** is a kind older man who is just a little too disorganized and distracted. We often learned processes in a lot less detail than the other section and got lost fairly unhelpful examples. He also seems to have missed to distinction between writing a term on the board and explaining it. I can’t tell you have many times I went through my notes only to find lists of terms without explanations (which I would have written down had they been there). His tests were challenging but not completely unreasonable. Do not pay attention to the practice tests, the other professor makes them and they are entirely irrelevant.
- 300 lv: “Hands down the best science professor I have seen at Williams: Clear, engaging, and relevant lectures: we learn about antibiotics resistance, gut microbiota, bioterrorism using anthrax, resistant TB, etc. Interesting and challenging readings (mostly from PNAS, Cell, Nature, Science) Caring: bake fresh hot cookies and breads for classes once in a while; assist you tirelessly in caring out your independent project; office hour on demand. Great grading rubric & class format (in my opinion):
each exam consists of analyzing a paper given in advance, analyzing experiments, proposing explications and supportive experiments; I just love that you do not need to remember all details because 1) the exams are not memory-based and 2) if you forget some details you can make them up and provide your own justifications (need to be convincing).
exams, and final are self-scheduled take-home and she is very flexible in granting extension (for exams and paper)
Independent project is what I love the most: students can come up with microbiology-relevant experiment on their own and do it solo or with partners for the independent project. It’s a great opportunity to learn techniques you don’t know yet like qPCR or biofilm formation quantification beside application of old techniques (all depend on the project you came up with)
Poster / mini-review: also another great thing about the class; if you’re busy at the end of the semester then go with poster (choose a renowned microbiologist and present about that person and 2 of his/her papers); if you really want to learn about microbio then go with mini-review (read >4 papers - at least 3 primary researches and 1 review; then do a synthesizing analysis of all of them).
If you lost interest in Biology after BIOL 101-102 and Genetics (202), this is the class that can revive it (as well as helping your grade if your grades were plagued by bad memorization in previous classes like in my case). ATTENTION: Microbiology is only offered every other year so take your chance in Spring 2014.”
2. Maths:
- 100 lv: One of the best professors at Williams. Just an overall cool guy who wants desperately to make math fun, and nearly always succeeds. He can take difficult concepts in calculus and make them seem like 3rd grade math, and his forays into knot theory and other advanced work at the beginning of class were always fun. Problem sets were a mix of basic questions and more difficult ones, but he was well-prepared to give hints, but not answers, during office hours.
- 200 lv: I was terrified of this class based on what previous people have said about it, but ended up really liking both Stat 201 and Professor **. Lectures were sometimes very fun, with telling awesome stories about his stat experiences (I won’t deny he sometimes name drops…), but were sometimes 50 minutes of him writing a proof on the board that no one was following (you won’t be expected to memorize proofs). I found him to be friendly and helpful when I had questions. The most straightforward way to learn the material is to read the textbook, which is easy to follow and full of examples. It stinks having two problem sets a week, but the exams aren’t very tough which is a plus. I had never taken a stat class, and found what we learned extremely interesting– enough to want to take another class, hopefully with ***.