5 Things I Wish I’d Known About PICKING COURSES When I Started College

At Grockit, we’re all about education and getting you ready to move on to the next stage in your life.  But we’re not just teachers; we’re all former and/or current students, too, and we’ve got more than just test preparation tips to share with you!

By the end of my freshman year in college, I had already changed my major twice, and as a result, I picked up a lot of random knowledge about different kinds of classes across several disciplines.  Read on to learn the easy way from a few lessons I got the hard way!

1. Two words: PASS/FAIL.  Don’t overuse this option—it looks lazy on your transcript if you’ve taken tons of pass/fail courses—but if it’s available to you, take advantage of it when its appropriate.  Talk to your advisor if you’re not sure how it works.  There’s no better way for a liberal arts scholar to explore astrophysics, or for an engineering student to learn about Chaucer, than by doing it pass/fail.  Once the grade pressure is off, the learning pleasure can really kick in, and you might discover a new academic passion!
2. Start with your foundation courses, then move on to the specialized ones later.  You might change your mind a few times about what you want to major in, and if you’ve taken a bunch of English courses before deciding that you REALLY want to be a math major, you might not be able to use all of those credits.  Try to get your general ed requirements out of the way at the beginning; those credits will usually be good no matter what major you end up pursuing.
3. Often, credits will transfer from another institution but the grade won’t—make the most of this!  If you’re worried about what getting a C in that dreaded foundation course will do to your GPA, try taking it during the summer at a community college and transferring the credit to your university later.  Of course, see an advisor to make sure that the credit will transfer and will fulfill your requirement, but with a little planning you can save some yourself both money and stress this way; this is a particularly popular option for math-haters who have to take a basic course in the subject to graduate.
4. The rule of thumb is that each credit hour of class will translate to about 3 hours of homework.  You should be prepared to spend 9 hours each week prepping for a 3 credit class, so don’t overload yourself by taking more credits than you can handle the out-of-class responsibilities for.
5. Learn a little about the professor before signing up for the class, if you can.  Do some research online or ask upperclassmen.  A great professor can make a boring subject captivating; this also goes the other way.  Don’t pick a course just for the topic—try to learn from professors who interest you, too.

What kinds of things have you learned about picking courses, and what do you wish you knew?  Share it in the comments!

About Grockit: Grockit is a fun and engaging learning community that encourages students to learn from group study, game play, expert tutorials and solo study. Students that prepare with Grockit have proven to achieve higher scores on college admissions tests. 

About the author: Andrea Alexander is a current graduate student in the School of Information at the University of Michigan. She's been teaching test prep for about eight years and have picked up lots of helpful knowledge along the way. She specializes in the verbal aspects of test prep, since her education and career experience as an attorney, freelance writer, and editor have given her the background for that.