<p>I have many questions and concerns about graduates teaching at the University of Chicago. On my visit to the college for its overnight program, both of my classes were taught by graduate students.</p>
<p>I’m sure there is already a lengthy, detail thread on this topic, but I cant find it. Could someone provide a link?</p>
<p>Also, I’m wondering whether Chicago allows students to audit classes. That is, may they attend a few classes before officially enrolling? Or, as an alternative method, does the college allow students to unenroll within the first week of a course?</p>
<p>If you choose your classes wisely, you can avoid graduate students altogether. The only exception is 13000 series calculus, i.e. calculus for non-science majors (mostly), which is almost always taught by PhD students. But there is no reason to have a graduate student for humanities, social sciences, art history, etc. There are plenty of professors, distinguished ones at that, teaching these courses.</p>
<p>If you end up with a graduate student it is likely because you are not being flexible enough with your scheduling (e.g. graduating four year in spring term who needs to be in a biology topics course that meets Tuesday and Thursday, but only in the mornings). In such a case, you might have to settle for a doctoral candidate.</p>
<p>I second uchicagoalum’s statements regarding the ability to avoid graduate student teachers. I’ve only had one grad student teacher and that was in my 153 calculus class. Both my Sosc & Hum sequences were taught by amazing professors, and all of my science classes have been professor-taught. Also I’d like to just put forth the idea that just because you are being taught by a graduate student does not mean that it’s necessarily low quality education – a lot of my friends have enjoyed their graduate-taught classes. But yes, if you wish to avoid them, this is certainly possible because when you register for classes you can see who is teaching the course, do a quick search to see if they are a non-graduate student or not and voila you’re good to go.</p>
<p>In general, yes, you can audit classes: just show up (most classes don’t take attendance and if they do, just say you’re interested in auditing). It’d probably be respectful to send an e-mail to the professor as well. The one main exception is the foreign language classes (at least that’s what my advisor has told me): they don’t want you in the classes unless you plan on registering/putting in all of the work. </p>
<p>Also, you can unenroll from a course up to the Friday of 3rd week without it showing up on your transcript.</p>
<p>I’d like to update my original statement to confess that, on review, one of the professors was not a graduate student. I took this for granted because of his soft-spoken attitude and his young age. However, I will note that the other course, an introductory course in Greek, was taught by a graduate student of sub-par quality (he wasn’t very engaging, struggled with his English). </p>
<p>“Add/drop” is another useful resource- up until the third week of classes, you are able to drop or add any class. This gives people time, especially during first week, to shop around and attend five or six classes to see which four are the best fit. While this is not as traditional a shopping period as some other schools may offer, it does give you the opportunity to look around for classes or to find something else if what looked good in the course catalog doesn’t turn out to be something you are interested in spending 10 weeks learning.</p>
<p>A word of advice – adding a class in second or third week can be very risky if you haven’t been at least sitting in since close to the beginning just because of the workload and readings that need to be done. The quarter is too short to string out a decision that long.</p>
<p>S’s HUM instructors have been PhD students in their final year or so and he has thoroughly enjoyed their classes. His first HUM instructor gave him a page of typed comments on his first essay – he was delighted to get substantive feedback!</p>
<p>He had initially signed up for SOSC as well fall quarter, but decided to drop it and spread out the yummy Core goodness over as long a stretch as possible. He was also taking two other advanced classes that he felt would be a major time commitment and did not want to get in over his head. Not a problem to drop, and it never showed up on the transcript.</p>
<p>S1 sat in on several math sequences in the fall to find where he wanted to be; sat on a philosophy class’s waitlist until the prof was able to get funding for a second TA approved. Made us quite worried that he didn’t have a backup class at the ready that he could hop right into had the TA been denied. </p>
<p>One of S1’s profs had the students fill out a questionaire about their background, why they were taking the class, and said he wanted this info from everyone – especially if one was auditing or just sitting in. Policies probably vary by professor, but this one did not have an issue with auditing/observing.</p>
<p>Even at LACs, they don’t make actual professors teach introductory language courses. There is nowhere you want to go where you will have a professor teaching an introductory language course. It would be a waste of the professor’s time, and of yours.</p>