Hey everybody! My name is Matthew, and I'm a '27 from Florida interested in majoring in Chemistry or Biology (not quite sure yet!). Outside of the classroom, I plan on being involved in Dartmouth's theatre scene and outdoor programs! In the future, I'm hoping to merge my passions for scientific discovery and teaching others by becoming a professor. I can't wait to be a part of everything Dartmouth has to offer, and I hope you enjoy coming along for the ride!
During my first term, I wanted to try something completely new—and start working on fulfilling some of the distributive requirements. Two birds with one stone, right? To accomplish this, I enrolled in the first of three introductory Chinese language courses. Taking a fun and informative class with an interesting subject matter—and a stellar professor—has made this term fantastic! I can't wait to see what's in store over the next two terms. I also have a full blog post about my first-year language experience if you're interested in learning more!
With spring term fast approaching (seriously, how did 24W go by so fast?), I have been figuring out my courses for next term for the past few weeks. I am now enrolled in Chinese 3, Bio 16 (the foundational Ecology class), and Bio 26 (Global Change Biology) for the spring term. This blog post will be a reflection on course selection at Dartmouth and the resources available when picking classes. Here's how it works:
Step 1: Research
Course selection begins by burrowing through the massive Dartmouth course catalog. There are a lot of choices, so narrowing down by subject area and which prerequisites are required helps make the choice easier. Every student has an assigned advisor and undergraduate dean who can help you decide between courses when you're stuck. I've gone to my dean's office hours several times to help sort out my courses, understand prerequisite requirements, and even assess the difficulty of my course load for future terms. It's always a lot of help, and getting to know my dean and advisor has been a lot of fun.
Step 2: Initial Course Selection
Unlike other schools, Dartmouth doesn't (initially) make you scramble onto a website at a set time to fight over course slots with your peers. First, you are given a week to choose your top three courses for the term. Then, through a part-lottery, part-graduation requirements, part-mysterious-administration-magic-based process, you are placed into some or all of your courses. If you are like me for the past two terms, you get all three courses, and your journey stops here. For spring, however, I only got two of my courses (maybe next year, Soil Ecology), and it was time to move on to Step 3.
Step 3: Course Selection Part II
To fill up your remaining course slots, you engage in a course selection process like other schools. The morning after initial schedules come out, you wake up early and rush to the election website, joining whichever backup courses still have slots open. Many people will also email professors trying to get into their initial courses to see if they can expand the class by a few slots or add them to the waitlist.
Step 4: Add-Drop
Finally, at the beginning of the term comes the add-drop period. For the first week, your schedule remains open, and you can drop out of classes that you aren't enjoying or add additional courses with open slots to your schedule. People use add-drop for lots of reasons. Don't like the first impressions of one of your classes? Drop it! Find out that someone else has done the same for a class you really want to take? Add yourself to it! Add-drop gives students lots of flexibility to switch around their schedule to find the best match for them every term and gives an extra chance to get into full classes that you're really interested in.
And that's it! Although my course selection journey for this term involved a lot more research and a few more tough decisions than last term, I'm so happy with my current schedule and can't wait to see where spring term takes me!
After returning from an enriching study abroad program, I'm diving into a bustling spring semester here at Dartmouth. Here are my four courses I'm taking this term!
Dartmouth's liberal arts curriculum pushes students to explore new departments and draw connections between seemingly disparate disciplines. Come explore my Economics, Physics, and Asian, Societies, Cultures, and Languages classes!
At Dartmouth, there is an undergraduate requirement for language; after all, it is the liberal arts! Fulfilling this requirement looks different for various people and I will focus on my experience.
