<p>I see we have an eager beaver first year on the board!</p>
<p>Wannabeivy, I recommend taking some time and enjoying these last few weeks before orientation. I know planning ahead can sometimes be advantageous, but trust me, there will be plenty of time and opportunity to learn and get questions about Wintersession answered once you’re actually on campus and fall semester is in session.</p>
<p>That being said, unless things have changed drastically (which I haven’t seen any evidence) academic Wintersession courses are included in the normal tuition. There are no separate fees for the courses themselves besides what you’d have to pay for textbooks. You’re “allowed” to take as many as you’d like, but realistically, you’ll only want to take 1 academic course during Wintersession. Remember, it’s a semester’s worth of learning scrunched into 3 weeks. It’s intense. I had a friend start to take Russion 101 during Wintersession but dropped out about a week or so into it - then she just hung out for the rest of the month. Every year, there are some non academic, more fun “offered” as well, taught by staff and students as well as some faculty. Past courses have dealt with the art of chocolate, knitting, beer tasting, and quilting. Obviously these are less intense and more for enjoyment. I don’t think instructors for these “fun” courses are paid anything - basically people are volunteering their time to share their expertise in their subject, with usually a small fee going towards material for the “course.” MIT has their IAP time that mostly overlaps with our Wintersession and they will have various academic and non academic courses as well. I took a furniture making class one year - loads of fun.</p>
<p>So I guess, conceivably, a first year could teach one of the fun, non academic courses during Wintersession if she wanted to. There’ll be postings with more info once it gets closer to January.</p>