some advice needed from current SCA film students

Nester
Sat, 08 May 2010 11:58:54 +0000

When you go onto the USC website and look at the lists of classes that fulfill GE requirements, there are asterisks next to classes that fulfill two requirements. (If I remember correctly, these are generally classes that fulfill both a distribution requirement and the diversity requirement.) In terms of the TO classes themselves, the student must take one each of, I think, six or seven categories of classes, with no possibility of doubling up in terms of requirements. These include the two required writing classes. The TO classes fulfill most of the GE requirements. But there are GE requirements that are not fulfilled by TO including foreign language, diversity, an advanced science class, and an advanced social science class. All of these additional classes, except for diversity, can be fulfilled through AP’s (or taking a test, the first part of which can be passed online, but the second part of which has to be taken in person in the case of language), and some of them can be fulfilled through a twofer. There are film-related classes that fulfill some of the GE requirements, such as classes related to women or various minority groups in film for diversity, or film of Southeast Asia for the advanced social science. There is usually a pretty wide range of courses that can be taken to fulfill each GE requirement, such as history of jazz for diversity.

Although TO can be pretty intense, fulfilling the requirements within the first three semesters is not onorous (especially if the student attended a rigorous high school), it was possible to take film classes at least one of which counted for a GE requirement, and being ready to begin the production sequence second semester of soph year is completely realistic.

Note that students in some SCA majors other than production (I’m not sure of the requirements for all of the SCA majors, so you’d have to check.), are not required to fulfill all of their GE’s or finish TO before being allowed to take the 290 and related production courses.