REGISTRATION NOTES

Seniors

[ Choosing Courses ]  [ Thesis ]
[ Projects ]  [ General Notes ]

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. If he or she cannot act as your adviser, you may ask another CSS tutor.  (Be sure to let Madeleine know so we can keep our files current.) Go to him or her for advice and signature at preregistration time in November as well. Be sure to see your adviser before making course selections, not afterwards.

All CSS seniors take the College Seminar in the fall (one credit). Additionally, they take either a thesis tutorial leading to an Honors thesis, for one credit per semester, or a program of study leading to a senior project, which entails at least one course per semester, one of which is the Individual Tutorial that is worth one credit.

Thesis tutorials. If you did not organize your thesis tutorial last spring, move fast now or you may lose the thesis adviser you have in mind. Even if you lined this up last spring, be prepared to start up fast now: too many theses are weakened or even fail because of time lost in September and October. The "CSS Senior Year Program"  details the events and deadlines that go with an Honors thesis. You are personally responsible for meeting these deadlines. Remember that you have to submit a thesis tutorial form during Drop/Add period at the start of each semester.

Senior projects. The nature of such a project, and the requirements that go with it, are specified in the "CSS Senior Year Program." You should line up all the courses involved at the start of the year; in particular, you need a tutor for the individual tutorial that normally forms the culmination of the project.

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.

Other courses. You can do what you like with remaining course slots not accounted for by the seminar, and thesis or project. Keep in mind, however, that the CSS expects you to exercise your opportunities to generalize in subjects outside the social studies (one course per semester) unless you can convince your adviser to approve a different program.

Prerequisites and Permission. Even though the CSS Senior Seminar is a required course for you, the computer will not admit you without the necessary permission slip.

Grades. As in junior year, CSS courses (including thesis and individual tutorials) 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, and the results will be recorded on your transcript accordingly by the Registrar's Office.

Transcripts. The Registrar's Office prepares your transcript, using a special format for CSS students. You should check it over before having it sent off with applications for jobs or graduate school; things sometimes get lost in the shuffle, especially transfer credits (e.g., from overseas programs), completion of incompletes, and audits. Check it over again after first-semester results have been entered.

Double Majors. In general, we do not recommend that CSS'ers have a double major. Nearly always, a major in some other subject 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 quite enough Economics 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?

General Education Expectations. Before graduation, each student in the College of Social Studies must have taken courses that meet the specifications of both Stage I and Stage II.

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