<p>has anyone here taken this class? if so i’d be grateful for any information you could provide from a student’s perspective. i’m interested in this class as a freshman, but can’t find much information on the course. the topic interests me, and i expect to earn my grades through work, but how heavy should i expect the work load on this course? also, how are the lectures?</p>
<p>DO NOT TAKE THIS CLASS AS A FRESHMAN. SERIOUSLY. DO NOT.</p>
<p>there’s literally NO other work except a 30+ page MINIMUM “socialist thought journal” that he totally grades arbitrarily. take another politics core first: take political theory or international or comparative. political theory is a good, easy freshman course. </p>
<p>take ANYTHING other than this class.</p>
<p>while having one project might seem awesome, it also means you have exactly ONE shot to get the grade you want. i would recommend this course later, when you’re a sophomore or a junior. it IS very interesting, but as a freshman student, you want classes where you can get the feel of NYU and a typical politics course and this is really not one of them.</p>
<p>he’s brilliant and interesting and has a lot to say, but the huge project was very frustrating for me, as a junior. i only got a B+ and i have no idea why.</p>
<p>thank you for the advice. i’m currently on the waitlist for political theory and in position 2. do you know how likely it is to get into that class off the waitlist?</p>
<p>should i put socialist theory as my back up for political theory, or pick another subject?</p>
<p>pick another subject. take comparative or international. power and politics is really, really dry.</p>
<p>at 2, you’ll definitely get off the waitlist.</p>
<p>Odd, all my politics friends who took Socialist Theory said it was the easiest course they had ever taken. All you had to do was write a little more than the minimum for the journal, and you’d get an A. </p>
<p>Also, I don’t think you can take Socialist Theory before Political Theory, no? Unless they’ve drastically changed the pre-reqs since then.</p>
<p>If you want a good introduction to politics as NYU teaches them, take International, which is heavy on game theory. If you want a more balanced introduction, take comparative. And if you have any interested in Power and Politics, including the psychology behind how laws are made and the importance of value-shifting, take Power and Politics, but wait until Sanford Gordon is teaching it.</p>
<p>they changed the pre-reqs for it. </p>
<p>i wrote over the minimum. however, i think it’s a little frustrating for a freshman course, and it’s not indicative at all of the politics department at NYU. which is why i still think it’s a bad course for a freshman to take.</p>
<p>I wasn’t passing judgment on you at all, missamericanpie, just saying that it’s odd that just a couple semester before you took it, it was still considered a ridiculously easy course. I don’t doubt that Ollman would have changed his requirements, considering how much of an open secret it was that writing above the minimum would guarantee an A. </p>
<p>I’m a little surprised they changed the pre-reqs though; socialist theory as a subject is fairly incomprehensible to most people unless they have some background in the subject or know the basics of political theory, particularly since socialism is thrown around as a buzzword enough times that the average person confuses it with other modes of governance. Hence why I did not say that it’s a good course for a freshman, in addition to the fact that, from what I heard, it sounds a lot more philosophical than the practicality of game theory. I honestly think that International is the best course to take if someone wants to get a good overview of how most politics classes are conducted.</p>