Hoya Saxa! Welcome to Georgetown!
This is an overdue post. Georgetown does not explain very well to freshmen how to design a four year plan. They will probably send you a small packet late in the summer explaining to you how to register for your courses, and giving you a selection of a fairly small number of options. I don’t think it’s very helpful. So this post will be about fixing that.
First, though, a caveat: I am not a professional at this, and I have no means of guaranteeing this entire post is accurate. Make sure that any four year plan you draft is verified by your dean when you arrive here. This is absolutely crucial. I would not like to hear that some freshman followed my advice, didn't verify, and then arrived at senior year having missed some obscure requirement. So please, people, use this as a rough guide only!
//How-to
Step One: Browse through your school’s bulletin (found at http://bulletin.georgetown.edu/, you’ll need to scroll down the page a little). I am a student in the college (rather than MSB, NHS, or SFS), so that’s what I’m familiar with, and what I will walk you through. The process should be similar for the other schools. Here’s a link to the college’s bulletin: http://bulletin.georgetown.edu/collegegen.html (note the bulletin may change between years; if you are reading this later, you might want to locate the most recent version when it gets posted).
Step Two: After a while, select the academic program that you think you will follow. This can include up to three “elements” (that is, one major and two minors/certificates, two majors and one minor/certificate). It’s fine if you change your mind later; you just need to pick stuff to start with. I recommend selecting the *highest* number of things you might want to do, so that you plan for a “worst case” class usage scenario (so if you know you want to be a government major, and you think you might want to be a Russian minor, and you might be considering a certificate – my academic program – it would be best to plan in all three, rather than just the major). While you are doing this, it’s important that you note a few things:
- Consider what kind of social life you expect to have on campus. Consider clubs you might join, potential leadership positions, things like that. Think about how much time you would like to have free.
- Consider that college work is much harder than high school work. I am not deceiving you. College professors are not reasonable human beings.
- Consider the relative difficulty of different kinds of classes. Intensive language courses will take over your soul (fellow agnostics and atheists, you are not exempt). I know you cannot conceive of the amount of time they will take over, not having experienced it previously, but please just trust me on this. The same is true of many pre-med hard science classes (it is my understanding that orgo will be the hardest experience of your young life; you have been warned).
- Consider whether or not you want to take on an internship. If you do, realize that even 20 hours per week with 20 hours of class is the equivalent of a full-time job. You will not have much of a life outside of this, and you will not have a lot of time to study. Grades might then suffer.
- Consider the purpose of your majors and minors. This can be important for future career paths.
- Consider how different majors and minors will shape your career path more generally. What will help you get a job later? Will your language skill be better supported by a regional certificate program or minor? Would your linguistics major work well with a computer science minor or double major, that would let you do computational linguistics? Is your interest in chemistry enough to encourage pursuing a major that will never be useful to you in your eventual goal of teaching high school English? Choose carefully which battles to fight and try to justify the arrangement of your majors and minors, rather than each individually.
Step Three: Collect the requirements from the bulletin. Be careful and thorough. Sometimes something like a “tutorial” or “colloquium” will be mentioned, but classes won’t appear in the schedule or in the rest of the bulletin. Those are still usually relevant. Read carefully and build your list thoroughly. Also consider whether or not your program offers an honors version that you want to apply for. Check what class requirements result from succeeding at this. Check for lab requirements for science classes, for hierarchical class requirements (for example, the cognitive science minor requires a number of classes dispersed by subject over the 100 level, but most of these classes also have pre-requisites – meaning that the cognitive science minor actually requires almost twice the number of classes it appears to!). Build a list of these requirements in excel or google spreadsheet, and place them in sequential order. Also record the number of credits each class requires as best you can (you can do this perfectly once you get access to the scheduler; for now treat anything not labeled as three credits, except intensive languages (6) and the hard sciences (which will take quite a few because of lab requirements…if you have a hard science track you want to schedule, contact me and I’ll try to put you in touch with a fellow science person to work it out).
Step Four: Assess your general education requirements. The language requirement varies by language (you must complete “intermediate level” in the college, which will be one year from some language, two for others; the SFS has a proficiency exam, etc.). Most require two years, but it varies. You’ll need to check the bulletin. Record credits for these courses as well. For the college, the other requirements are as follows:
- Humanities and Writing - 2 courses
- History - 2 courses (from specific listings)
- Philosophy - 2 courses (usually problem of god or bib lit + one more)
- Theology - 2 courses (intro to ethics or intro to philosophy + one upper level or the other intro)
- Math/Science - 2 courses (exceptions, see the bulletin)
- Social Science - 2 courses
- Intermediate Language – as required
You’ll want to read through the bulletin at least once so that you understand the specific requirements for each of these, but I can’t do all of the legwork for you. :P It’s all there.
Step Five: Use a spreadsheet to draw the maximum number of courses you can take per semester. I've done the tough stuff and made you an interactive online spreadsheet. If you like it, buy me a coffee when you get to campus. ;)
The first sheet (see at the bottom, where it reads blank, demo, etc?) is for you. You can play around on that while we discuss. Nothing will be saved, though, so don't reload the page and expect it to stay. You'll have to copy it to your own doc (or download mine, see below) to save it.
//Demo walk-through
//caveat: this schedule is deceptively simple and empty. Please do not make the mistake of taking non-required electives during your first year. You can FB or comment here to ask why that is, but otherwise just trust me. As you debate different majors and minors and find new class opportunities, you will fill most of the holes in your schedule. Take 15-20 credits your first year, as many as you feel comfortable with, and don't take non-req'ed classes.
You will see from demo sheet one that we are designing a schedule for a government major with a computer science minor and a Russian minor. I chose these since I pursued each at some point, so I'm a bit more familiar with the requirements.
At Demo 1 I have listed on the right all of the required classes, abbreviated, from the bulletin. This is the first step.
In Demo 2, I have begun placement. Note that I am starting with things which are sequential first. Geneds and most of the government major are not timing dependent (CPS is not required for IR, etc.) whereas Russian is (Russian 2 requires both semesters of Russian 1, etc.). Therefore I place this in first. In ranking sequential items, I selected Russian over the CS minor because I think starting languages earlier is better, but that's preferential.
In Demo 3, you will see that I have continued, placing the next sequential item, the CS minor.
In Demo 4, I demonstrate some problems to avoid. All of the other courses have been placed, but there are two issues. First, the duel requirement I noted above is in violations, and two, there are two few courses.
Demo 5 demonstrates a filled and complete schedule that isn't violating any of the rules (unless I fucked up, in which case I apologize; let me know and I will fix it!).
And that's all there is to it! The four year plan sets you up for planning your schedule (something to be covered in a later post). If you have questions from the process or want me to double check your plan, feel free to add me on FB and message me to let me know. My name is April Eubank. You can also email me at ale35 at georgetown dot edu.