Overview
When students begin college, they're often intimidated by the rarified atmosphere of intellectual life, so their colleges walk them through course enrollment and see to it that they enroll in a variety of courses designed to give them a good start on academic life. After the first semester, however, students begin to make more informed and independent course choices, which may be based on requirements, practicalities, and personal bent.
Is it Hard or Easy?
Many freshmen and sometimes sophomores and upper classmen often try to schedule courses that they have heard are easy. This may be a symptom of laziness, but it may also be fear. Sometimes taking a course that seems easy is a practical concern: When a student enrolls in challenging courses, she may offset the workload by enrolling in one "easy" course so that she can still carry a full-time credit load for financial aid purposes and allow enough time and intellectual space for more challenging courses. In fact, College Board, a student advisement organization, recommends this approach.
Who's the Professor?
It's not unusual for students to try to get into a course because of the reputation of the professor teaching it. This may be because a professor is perceived as easy, or because the professor is an outstanding scholar in her field or because the professor is regarded as a fine teacher.
It's a College Requirement
Nearly all colleges and universities have general education requirements, which cover a variety of disciplines within the humanities, mathematics, the natural sciences and social sciences. Students can choose from among lists of approved courses, but must take at least one course or more courses in each discipline. The idea is to give students academic breadth, as well as depth, so that when they graduate they will have a fuller sense of the world and how it works.
It's a Major