How To: Arts and Sciences

Originally inspired by Elie Bilmes’ “Eight Things You Won’t Hear During Cornell Days” post, this Orientation week we’ll feature a series of posts that offer inside glimpses into Engineering, Arts and Sciences, ILR, and CALS. We’ll offer pieces of advice, dirty secrets, and interesting observations of the four schools- ideally stuff that incoming freshmen will find useful but won’t hear from their O-week leaders or faculty advisers. Up first is Dennis Shiraev with the A&S list.

Be Careful Exercising Your AP Credits: When given the opportunity to retake a class like Psych 101 or Calculus II when you have AP credit, retake the class. You’ll get an easy A or A+ and have one less class to worry about your first semester. A lot of freshman don’t like the idea of retaking something they’ve already learned before, but unless you’re coming from Thomas Jefferson or Phillips Exeter, the introductory class at Cornell is likely to be much more challenging than your high school AP/IB course. But you ask What if I want to get ahead on my major and start taking upper level classes as soon as possible? Trust me, you’ve got four years at Cornell and plenty of time to take all the super-difficult classes you could possibly desire, take it easy your first semester.

Ass-Kissing is Important: Alright, maybe that sounds a bit more disingenuous than I wanted, but the point is that you’ll always benefit from more interaction with your professors. Grading will be pretty formulaic in your large lecture classes, but much more subjective in seminars and discussion sections. So get to know your profs. Talk to them after class and during office hours, even if it has nothing to do with the class material. You never know when name recognition might suddenly move you from a B to a B+ at the end of the semester.

Hanging out at Libe Cafe is highly correlated with lower grades. Seriously. I guarantee that if I ran a regression of GPA on hours/week spent at Libe and controlled for all relevant variables, I would get a statistically significant negative coefficient on the Libe variable. You’ll run into “loungers,” “roamers,” and lots of social butterflies on suspiciously perpetual breaks from their real work in the stacks or the downstairs pit. Meeting and familiarizing yourself with these social personalities is admittedly part of the Cornell experience, but you’ve been warned, freshmen.

Choose Your Major Wisely And don’t go in with the notion that you have to know what you want to do as a freshman, as is often the case. Faculty advisers have an incentive to get you right into major-required courses- which is another reason why I urge caution when exercising AP/IB credits- and once you’ve invested a semester or two into a major, it’s much harder to switch out. So go in with an open mind and explore new fields of study your first two years. It’s much better to declare a major that you really like after 2 years than to spend 4 years studying something you hate.

Planning to Frat? Choose Schedule Appropriately. Greek life is a huge part of the Cornell social experience, whether or not you’re in a frat or sorority. The biggest piece of advice I can give to all freshmen is to go in with an open mind. If you’re not thinking about joining a frat/sorority, reconsider, and if you are, spend first semester figuring out if Greek life is really a good fit for you. Contrary to popular opinion, joining a frat is not equatable to signing away your academic soul for 100 cases of Keystone Light. Some of Cornell’s most accomplished students are members of active frat houses. So if you want to be a frat star and keep Harvard Law in the picture, just plan your schedule accordingly. Take a light credit load of easier classes second semester freshman year so that your GPA can survive pledging, then compensate with more credits your sophomore year.