<p>Swarthmore’s First-Year Seminars are designed to be small (usually capped at 12), interactive seminars to get first year students immediately engaged in boutique-scale classroom interaction with close contact with a faculty member. In other words, to get new students a taste of upperclass Swarthmore seminars, instead of just large intro courses with 30 students.</p>
<p>FYS courses may or may not be designated as “writing” courses, of which Swarthmore students are required to take at least three for graduation. A designated “writing” course has mandatory draft, review, conference, rewrite sequences for the written assignments. The review may be done by the professor or may be done by one of the student WA’s assigned to the course (a key premise of Swarthmore’s Writing Across the Curriculum program).</p>