completing your Course Preference form: First-time, first-year students
(Transfer students: you are invited to review the information below but please see the Transfer Students page for full information.)
In completing the Course Preference Form (CPF), you will benefit greatly by taking the time to prepare and take notes of classes of interest before you begin filling out the CPF. The CPF asks you to make a lot of choices and really should not be completed hastily! (And you’ll want to use a laptop or desktop computer, too.) The courses you select will be used to create your schedule for your first semester, so please be patient, thoughtful, and intentional in your preparation.
The four academic courses that will make up your schedule for the fall semester will be drawn from the list you will be creating. That list will include courses related to your area(s) of academic interest, courses of general interest (electives), your language choices, and your list of preferred Encounter courses.
You’ve already indicated your preferred Encounter courses, so that’s taken care of. You can actually reference that list while you complete the CPF, just to remind you of your choices—you won’t be able to modify the list of Encounter choices.
You may want to have the Frequently Asked Questions page open for additional information about General Education requirements, AP or IB or Dual Enrollment credits, transfer or international status, and more.
The CPF has several sections. Grab a pencil and paper because you’ll want to start a list of courses!
- First, your Area(s) of Academic interest: these are courses in discipline(s) that you might major or minor in or are otherwise committed to. These are courses you are excited to take because they really speak to your intellectual passions! You will identify four courses in this section.
- Pre-health, pre-engineering: Many students are not pursuing one of these and can indicate so. Students who are interested will indicate so and will have courses automatically added to their list; this table shows the courses that will be added to your list. (To be clear, "pre-health" and "pre-engineering" are not majors.)
- Potential major(s) or minor: You are NOT declaring a major (or minor) on this form, but you need a starting point for picking classes. Even if you’re not fully sure of what you might study, you have some ideas: you’ll indicate those from a pull-down list.
- Each academic area has one or more courses that are strongly recommended; see this table for those courses! For some disciplines, you'll have options; for example, a student interested in Art will have a choice of Art 103, 104, or 105. Follow the recommendations and include the course(s) on your list.
- If you’re interested in Chemistry or Mathematics (specifically Calculus), note that students are placed into an appropriate level. Thus the options read “CHEM 121/151 by placement” and “MATH 101/102/207 by placement.”
- While you should not duplicate courses anywhere on the CPF, you can list a course that’s also on your Encounter list, as we will offer both “regular” and “Encounter” sections of BIOL 133, CSCI 157, ECON 120, SPAN 299, and WRIT 206.
- If you have more than four courses, be sure to list your top four in this section and then add any others in the next section. If you have fewer than four courses, then add courses from the electives as discussed in the next section.
- At this point, your paper-and-pencil list should have four courses.
- Second, Electives and Other Courses that Interest You: you’ll add more courses here to complete your list of ten courses. Note that you aren’t picking sections or times, just courses; we need as much flexibility as possible to build your actual schedule.
- There are a lot of courses to pick from. To help you sort through them, see the chart on this page that organizes the courses by broad academic divisions. You can also find course descriptions in the College Catalog. All these courses are appropriate for new college students; they don’t have pre-requisites.
- Explore a range of courses! Don’t have more than three courses, total, from any one discipline. See if you can get courses from five or more of the broad academic divisions on your list.
- While you should not duplicate courses anywhere on the CPF, you can list a course that’s also on your Encounter list, as we will offer both “regular” and “Encounter” sections of BIOL 133, CSCI 157, ECON 120, SPAN 299, and WRIT 206.
- At this point, your paper-and-pencil list should have a total of ten courses.
- Third (and final), Languages: Sewanee has a foreign language and culture requirement in the General Education curriculum; depending upon a student’s placement in a language, meeting that requirement can take four semesters of study, so most Sewanee students take an appropriate language course in their first semester—in fact, having a language course is a priority for our registration process.
- You will have a placement for each of Sewanee’s eight languages of study based upon your score on the language placement exam; for those languages you never studied before, your starting point will be the first semester, Language 103.
- You’ll select three different languages of interest, ranking them first, second, and third. If your first-choice language placement course is full or not offered in your first semester, you may be placed into your second or third language choice. Again, please do not duplicate courses anywhere on the CPF.
- Some students may qualify for an academic accommodation that allows for a four-courses substitution in fulfilling G6. Students with questions about accommodations should contact Student Accessibility Services; if accommodations are approved, that office will communicate with the Office of Advising.
As you complete your pencil-and-paper notes—and then when you complete the CPF itself—please keep these key points in mind:
- You need to list your courses in your order of preference; the registration process will prioritize the courses at the top of your list!
- Be intentional in your selections: any course you include could be on your final schedule.
- Do not duplicate courses on this list; the registration program will reject entries with duplicate courses. (You can list a course that's also on your Encounter list, as we will offer both “regular” and “Encounter” sections of BIOL 133, CSCI 157, ECON 120, SPAN 299, and WRIT 206.)
Beginning June 8, you can complete and submit your Course Preference Form on your New Student Checklist. The form is due June 30--we will begin the process of building schedules July 1!
Schedules are made available in early August. Students will meet with their assigned faculty advisor during opening weekend at the end of August at which time they may discuss their schedules and will be eligible to make changes, if desired.
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