REGISTRATION NOTES

Juniors

[ Choosing Courses ] [ Thesis Prep ]
[ Gen Eds ] [ Grades ] [ Miscellaneous ]

You registered last spring for the fall semester. Now is the time to review your selections, discuss your schedule with your adviser, and make whatever changes are needed. Please keep in mind the requirements and other considerations given below.

Your adviser for this year will be the same as last year. Be sure to see your adviser before making course selections, not afterwards.

CSS courses for the Junior year are offered only in the second semester.  All CSS juniors are required to take the "Philosophy of Social Inquiry" colloquium as well as a two-module tutorial sequence equivalent to two course credits.  (Last spring you chose two-module tutorials for this coming spring semester.)   Here are some considerations in choosing your other courses to discuss with your advisor.

General Education Expectations. If you have not done so already, you must fulfill Stage I expectations by the end of your junior year and Stage II by the end of your senior year.

Students in the College of Social Studies who have not completed the General Education distribution expectation of Stage I (as given in the Announcement of Courses) by the end of the Sophomore year must, by the start of preregistration that spring for Junior year, submit a plan to their adviser for approval for completing the expectations of both Stage I and Stage II by graduation. Before graduation, each student in the College of Social Studies are required to have taken courses that meet the specifications of both Stage I and Stage II.

Research papers. Experience shows that students who arrive at senior year without having written long research papers may have difficulty with theses and senior projects. While the junior tutorials make a small start, you should plan to take some outside courses which require a major research paper.

Additional skills. Students of the social sciences interested in pursuing further research should be familiar with some basic quantitative techniques used in describing and explaining social phenomena. You might consider taking one of the following courses during your program of studies at the CSS: Economics 300, Government 204, History 362, Psychology 201, or Sociology 202 or 203. Students may also want to go deeper into the philosophical and historical bases of the social sciences, by taking courses in the philosophical classics, and ancient and modern world history.

Preparation for thesis. You may not know your thesis or project topic a year ahead of time, but it is well to be thinking about it and, if you have some ideas, to take some appropriate courses. Without the basic courses in a particular discipline (especially if it is one like Sociology that is not in the CSS), you may find it not only hard to do good work, but hard to find a supervisor. Especially if you have a particular thesis adviser in mind who is not in the CSS, plan to make contact with him or her well before your senior year. Be aware of the announcement of the Davenport Grant applications in March--a well-written thesis proposal could get you up to $1,500-2,500 in summer research money.

Prerequisites and permission. Even though the tutorials and Colloquium are required courses for you, the computer will not admit you without the necessary permission slips or (if you lack prerequisites) prerequisite override slips. Check the listings carefully to be sure what you need.

Grades. Unlike sophomore work, your CSS courses in the junior year are graded on the usual scale of A to F. You may take your other courses graded or not, if the instructor gives you a choice. The results in all courses will be recorded on your transcript by the Registrar's Office in the usual way, so make your choices seriously.

Double Majors. In general, we do not recommend that CSS'ers have a double major. Nearly always, majoring in some other department in addition to the CSS brings very slight advantages, if any, while it increases the stresses on you and drastically narrows your chance to take general-interest courses outside the CSS. If you want to impress a prospective graduate or professional school or an employer with the seriousness of your interest in, for example, Economics, you can choose statistics and micro-theory courses within the normal pattern of the CSS education, without forcing yourself over all the hurdles the Economics Department sets up for its majors. You can also prepare yourself adequately for post-graduate study in the same way; many CSS graduates over the years have done so. So why submit yourself to the hassle and narrowness of a double major?

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