Class Advice for Incoming Freshman
I will be heading to Ann Arbor for freshman orientation on Tuesday, and one task of orientation is to register for classes. I know many MGoBloggers attended Michigan, and to you, I would just like to ask for some scheduling advice in general. I am in LSA, but I'm going to be applying for Ross, so I will be taking a first year writing class, economics, and calculus for sure.
With that said, I am just curious as to what professors are good? Which first year writing classes/seminars are worth taking? I will probably be in Calc 2, but should I take Calc 116 or Calc 186 (honors)? Which econ 101 professor is worth taking? What other classes could be valuable? Any bit of advice that you could offer me would be very helpful. Thank you so much!
If you're looking for the easiest classes you could take: Polisci 101 with Mika Lavnque-Mante or Stats 250 with Gunderson.
Also, DO NOT take 186. You're much better off in 116, because Ross will hardly care about the difference between the two, but 116 is much easier. As long as long as you can get ~3.8 and do a few extracurricular around campus, you should be able to get into Ross no problem.
I didnt say it would be easy. I was just giving an honest opinion. The average BBA admit has about a 3.65 and that number goes up every year. I know kids in my section that got in with a 3.4 but anything lower than that is pretty rare. And everyone I know in that 3.8 range that applied got in. The bottom line is it's very selective and in order to get in, you have to do well your freshman year. But really a 3.8 isn’t that tough. A year of foreign language and a freshman seminar as GPA boosters make it easier. And yes Calc and Econ are on a curve, but something like the top 25% get A's in each. Is it hard? Yes. Is it achievable? Definitely.
Pepper your angus for calc 2, it's gonna be a wakeup call to college courses.
Thankfully I only needed to take calc 1, so my opinion probably isn't worth a whole lot, but calc 2 sounds terrifying.
Take the dinosaur mini course.
What I recommend to my high school seniors:
Fall (3/4 classes):
Take whatever English class you have to.
Take your next math class - even if you think your major doesn't need math, then take stats or something; it'll knock out some requirement and your better off not putting it off.
Finish or work on finishing your foreign language rec.
If some of those are 3 credits, then take some class where your primary reason for taking it is interest. It'll be easy, because you like it, and it'll let you focus on those other two classes and knocking them out of the park.
Winter
English, language if nec, math if nec, mix in a major pre-req. Save the rest of your LSA humanities classes for senior year or to mix in with an otherwise tough schedule.
Unless they changed it (I graduated in 09) when I was looking at going into a sports management major it was something you had to apply for after your second year at school.
you're in the kinesiology college and have to apply for the sports management program. Had several friends not make the cut and they had to transfer to LSA.
I believe it's a set number of students they take. So you've gotta be in the top 50 or however many students they're taking.
Most of the kinesiology classes I took were relatively easy, so your GPA should be as close to 4.0 as you can get it. I'm sure they've got the feeder classes online somewhere. Do all of those and get good grades while you're at it and you should have no problem.
If you find it easier to learn in a small environment - relative to the advantage other people have - you may get a higher score in a smaller class. But in general no, if a course is graded on a curve a small class presents very few opportunities at the top.
http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=640394
major in something useful, like math, eng, cs, stats, etc. "business" is for non-talents. anybody can get an office job without a bba, and Wall Street prefers Math majors over business majors anyway.
Yeah, but Ross also offers better recruiting than the Stats department...that's its main benefit. I would agree with you that studying financial math or Stats may serve you in better stead in the long term, but those departments simply don't have the connections that Ross does.
That's what minors are for. Major in Math, minor in Ross.
Or even better, undergrad in Math or some non-business major, and MBA at Ross.
You will need some work experience in between, but it does not have to be business.
I took 116 this year, along with Econ 101 and 102. All of those classes are very doable. I took 116 with 101 and managed to do just fine in them. Of course 116 will depend on the GSI you get, pray for an English speaker. I had a very good one so it made the class that much easier. Psych 111 with Schreier is a great class too.
I'm currently an orientation leader this summer at Michigan. My advice:
Ignore all advice you get here online at MGoBlog. There are Academic Advisors and Academic Peer Advisors whose job it is to help you choose classes. You'll meet with them multiple times over orientation. Trust them and ask them these questions, not random people on a blog.
Bonjour.
never reserach companies before you go into job interviews. You'll want potential employers to see how interested you are in their businesses by directing all your questions to them. Questions like "So what does FedEx do, exactly?"
Because choosing your first semester classes are EXACTLY like a job interview.
The people who are hired over the summer to help students choose classes have extensive training on how to help students. They know what classes they should be taking depending on what they are interested, and the thing that is the most counter productive is when a student comes in with wrong ideas about classes based on what friends/family/random MGoBlog posters tell them.
The one thing the advisors hate more than anything is when students are fed information about classes from people who have no idea what they are talking about. Even orientation leaders aren't allowed to give recommendations about classes because we don't have enough training.
But yes, instead of listening to people whose job it is to do this, this kid should listen to random posters on MGoBlog who haven't been at Michigan for years and have no idea what they're talking about.
I had no intentions of taking every little piece of advice offered on this blog, I just was doing this to get a general idea of what some former students felt about some classes there. That's all
I went to Michigan eons ago, and I would love to do it all over again today. Enjoy yourself and take as many interesting classes as you can. Those are the ones you'll remember and will get the most out of.
There's a relatively healthy amount of active Michigan students, undergrad and grad on here...Try not being super dismissive. The kid wants some advice, not binding declarations on what he'll be doing. That's okay. And frankly, being told something by someone on MGoBlog is like getting advice from anyone else. You're in no way bound to follow it. It's just asking for help, which is always allowed. Take it down a notch...
THIS! The only times I've spoken to my academic advisors was when I had to for orientation and when I declared my major. Its nice to have them around when you need it as they have gone through so many kids (some of whom have similar interests as you). But, ultimately your college career is in your hands.
most academic advisors will be very limited in what they can say and what they cannot. Here you can get people who will gladly differentiate professors and justify it. A counselor is going to tell you one chem prof. sucks and the other is awesome. Also lots of counselors seemed to me to not really care about individualizing kids programs, rather get the kids to take 5 years instead of 4 by having them take prep courses like pre-calc when it was not needed at all. An APA might do some of these, but here you have about 10 people doing what this kid wants and his APA might be in education or engineering and have very little valuable input.
employers do though, and they get told to make sure kids take a light load and other things that frequently aren't needed. Taking pre-calc for calc if pre-calc isn't required is pretty foolish in my opinion for most people, but for administration I'm sure there is pressure to push kids into pre-calc for monetary reasons at the justification of protecting them from struggling in calculus.
eh, it depends on where the advising is coming from. If you have an advisior thru the College of engineering, well they probably have a good idea about what you should be taking to prep for an engin/CS/math/physics major.
If you're at a small lib arts school, or private engineering school, same thing- the ounselors there are likely highly specialized in that environment.
If you're in LSA and Michigan? IMO, the counselors there are pretty mediocre only b/c it's really hard to be an expert in every fricking major in the LSA college at a huge school like M. Take their advice not as gospel, but as a data point.
Yes and no. Don't rely exclusively on MGoBlog (which should be the new motto for the site), but simply taking what your advisors have to say as dogma isn't really any better. They have their preferences abd beliefs as much as anyone, and just because they have some experience directing students to certain classes on certain tracts does not mean that people who actually experienced it more recently than them should be ignored just because they are posting on a blog. The more information, currated to a reasonably degree, is always best.
I'm sure you mean well, and probably on the whole are saying this beacuse legions of incoming freshman come in with goofy anecdotal stories from older siblings and insist on disagreeing with many of the Acadmeic Advisors or Academic Peer Advisors. I can see how that might be frustrating for you and your team. And while it's also possible that maybe you personally have a really great advisor (they do indeed exist), many of the advisors are frankly remarkedly unqualified and regularly dole out lousy advice. Almost none of them actually have a Michigan degree, nor know what it's like to be in some of the uber-competitive classes offered at a large university like Michigan. These are the same people who tell freshman to regularly turn down valuable AP credit and enroll in some of the worst classes on campus (Math 115, Chem 130, Bio 172, etc.), got Physics 125 canned in favor of 135, and did away with the Gen Chem 2 waiver (forcing many to take PChem). My premed advisor at LSA was a total moran, and I frequently encounter other premeds who have suffered due to awful advice from her.
Yes it can be said that you shouldn't believe everything you read on the net, but there are many success heavy-hitter alums who frequent this site and kindly offered wisdom on this thread. It sounds like the OP already realizes this, but to other future Freshman out there do talk to current students and alumni. Also great advice may also be had from the sophomores on your hall.
All I remember being told was that Jadwiga Sipwoska (the one and only Dotie) who taught GenChem, was "supposed to be a very good teacher." This was despite her being the only option and mediocre at best. I vaguely recall some other useless crap advisors spewed out such as "you'll learn a lot from this person" or "that professor is really engaging" and whatever other bull shit they could come up with.
At the end of the day, the thoughts and suggestions on MGoBlog are far more valuable seeing as there are many people here that have gone through this whole process only to realize they made some poor choices that if were avoided, first semester would have been much easier.
So for all you children that frequent this site and will be off to orientation soon, read through what people are saying here and take note of comments applicable to you.
don't overload yourself the first term, college is an adjustment. Especially if you were one of those top students in HS and things came easily for you, it will now be a pretty big step up. Not much different than the adjustments athletes have to make between HS and college, then between college and pro- be prepared to work a lot harder.
What exactly do you mean by saying "be direct" though? Because that sounds pretty sketchy. And acting sketchy towards girls is seriously the absolute worst thing anybody can do.