Contents
- What is shopping period?
- How do I decide which courses to take?
- How do I get a prerequisite override?
What is shopping period?
At Brown, shopping period is a period of 2 weeks where you can freely register and drop courses. You definitely can (and should) shop courses without being registered.
How do I decide which courses to take?
Read through the course directory (CAB) from top to bottom, without any filters on. You want to keep an open mind, and let your curiosity guide you. Don't exclude any courses just because you don't meet the prerequisites for them.
If something catches your eye, see if the course is on a course review site (Critical Review). The quality of the professor is more important than the quality of the topic. A good professor can save an otherwise boring topic; a bad professor will ruin an otherwise interesting topic. Add any course that seems good to a secondary cart on CAB.
It might be helpful to have your concentration requirements memorized as well.
How do I get a prerequisite override?
If you don't fulfill the prerequisites for a course, you can always ask for an override. On CAB, there will be a little box for you to write a message when you click the "Add to Cart" button.
Your goal is to convince the professor that you would be a good addition to the class. My general advice is to be polite, but to let some personality shine through. This can vary depending on how well you meet the prerequisites. For example, my override request for CSCI 2690 was brief and polite:
I am an incoming junior & have taken CSCI 1690 and another graduate
course before (CSCI 2952R).
Whereas my override request for CSCI 1951Q was longer:
Hi! I am in incoming junior who has done some research in program
analysis (specifically, using Lean to prove correctness of aggregation
functions in Bash scripts in CSCI 2952R). I have also taken CSCI 1951x,
which covers a bit of operational semantics of programming languages.
I hope this might be enough background despite not formally taking
CSCI 1260/1730 beforehand.
If you don't have any relevent background whatsoever, try to let your personality carry you through. Professors also appreciate people who seem like they will contribute new ideas to a class.
Don't stress too much about writing them. Try to avoid being stilted, and definitely avoid sounding like AI. As you can see, my override request for CSCI 1951Q had some typos and grammatical erros in it.