Choosing Courses |  Economics Requirement
Gen Eds | Grades | Miscellaneous

Now is the time to adjust your course selections for the fall to the conditions of membership in the CSS, discussing your schedule with your new adviser and making whatever changes are needed. As you do this, please keep in mind the requirements and other considerations given below.

Your adviser, now and for the rest of the year, is the tutor of your first-trimester tutorial: Mr. Adelstein, Ms. Wiliarty, or Mr. Paquette.. They will help you with preregistration in November and April as well. Be sure to see them before making course selections, not afterwards.

The CSS expects you to take one course outside the CSS in the fall, and one outside course in the spring.  As part of a well-rounded curriculum these should not be in the social sciences.  However, in the second semester in lieu of the Social Theory colloquium you may take a course in some subject related to the social studies, broadly defined.

Register for only one tutorial in the fall (even though you will begin a second tutorial before Christmas break). Register for the remaining two tutorials in the November pre-registration.

Economics. If you have completed Econ 110, with a minimum grade of C+, or Econ 101 and one other Econ course with an average grade of at least C+, you are all set. ( If you have taken no Economics and do not have calculus, enroll in Econ 101 first semester and a second Econ course in second semester. If you do have calculus, but no Economics, Econ 110 alone fulfills the requirement.   Students who have taken BOTH AP micro and macro, and have passed both with a grade of 4 or 5, are not required to take Econ 101, and may satisfy the economics requirement by taking any other economics course.  Students who have taken only one AP economics course must still take Econ 101 and another economics course, or take Econ 110.  Mr. Kilby will be glad to answer any questions you may have on this topic by E-mail. These courses must be taken on a graded basis.

Generalization courses. Your last course each semester (unless you have to take Econ 101 first semester) should be in something far removed from social studies: for example, art, literature or computer science. The perspective that comes from working in quite different fields is the essence of a liberal education. Besides, it is healthy to purge your mind of social studies a couple of times a week.

General Education Expectations. Due to the heavy load of required courses for CSS sophomores, you need not to fulfill Stage 1 expectations by the end of sophomore year. But you must satisfy them by the end of junior year, so if you have not done this yet, keep working towards it.

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 that meet the specifications of both Stage I and Stage II.

GENERAL NOTES

Grades. The Sophomore tutorials and colloquium are ungraded; instead you will receive extensive evaluations, both written and oral. At the end of the year there is a comprehensive examination on the material of these courses, graded in the CSS mode (High Distinction, Distinction, Commendable, Satisfactory). This comprehensive grades are the only grades to be recorded on the transcript for sophomore year; grades for courses taken outside the CSS will not appear on the transcript. (However, if you need a transcript during sophomore year, your outside grades will appear on it. It is a good idea to save your Sophomore year transcript, as these grades will disappear from your transcript, should you want to refer to those grades in a later year.)

Should you take your three outside courses graded or pass/fail? All Econ courses that you take to fulfill the Economics requirement of the CSS must be graded. The case for taking other courses for a grade are (i) it helps you avoid the moral hazard of a soft pass and little learning; (ii) if you leave the CSS, the graded evaluation, which the instructor could state in a letter, will be a plus; and (iii) albeit not on your CSS transcript, your tutors can report those grades in their letters of recommendation--again a plus. The case against a grade--especially during the first semester--is the extra stress.

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?

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.

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