I give a lot of advice about classes.
Students ask me often about the good classes and good professors.
I always tell them first don’t be duped by the course title and the syllabus.
Everything looks nicer in the course title and syllabus.
For instance, there was a course called financial data analytics but it was really statistics using some financial data. The worst part was that the professor was a statistician and didn’t really know about finance so…with a lot of institutional knowledge missing, a lot of things looked bizarre.
Similarly, there was a course called financial econometrics but it was plain vanilla econometrics with financial data. Not the real financial econometrics…yup, do you due diligence.
So how do you do your due diligence? Well, ask around-
Ask those who took the class. See ratemyprofessor. Of course, there is bias but it is some information rather than none.
The rule of thumb is don’t take any class that more than half of the people that you talked to say it is bad. Don’t leave your education to chance.
And don’t ever pick a class because it matches your schedule. You will suffer. I had friends and students suffer. Don’t force all your classes to few days to have Friday off…It will get super tough during crunch week-
Now, about asking questions to professor about classes-
You should ask but also know the professor’s limitations as well.
First, we didn’t go to school here. So we don’t know. We really don’t know. I went to undergrad almost 20 years ago in a different school so I don’t know.
Second, we would not badmouth our colleagues unless there are very serious concerns about their classes. And the chair will probably take care of that. So even though we hear not so good things about certain classes we are somewhat constrained to talk about them.
Also, sometimes students will take things out of context and spread not so true information. Had it happen to me. I said that a certain class was lower effort and workload (you can clearly see from the syllabus) but the student asked whether that was the case to that professor. Later, that colleague confronted me…Yeah…that was a bad day. I had to explain it to my colleague. Not my best day.
Third, our lenses are different from students. Professors are usually smarter and work harder. So some classes may seem easy to a professor but may be hard for students. I remember as an economics undergrad, when the professor told me that applied econometrics was not that hard. It is econometrics applied (yeah really?!). No it was hard. I mean applied econometrics is a big jump from econometrics I. I was also told the Honors program was well guided. Nope, I didn’t know I had to program so much. They didn’t tell me that. I had to drop the course because my programming skills were poor back then (even now I am improving every day).
So you need to really be careful when asking about classes to professors. Remember, most of them were bright students and worked super hard.
So what do I do when students ask me about classes?
I keep a good class list compiled from students and alumni over the years.
I also recommend the courses that almost everyone knows that is a good course.
Finally, I recommend courses that a colleague that I know well and respect teaches.
So far it has worked Yay-
Hope these tips are helpful 😀
Thank You Jesus for all Your wisdom. Let us always be thankful and share Your love with others Amen-
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