This will be quite informal, and I will try to adjust the
content to material that interests you.
Direct from our home office in University Park, Pennsylvania, here's a copy of the top 10 reasons first-year students are signing up in record numbers for freshman seminars at Penn State's University Park Campus.
10. To start off their first semester with a class taught by a senior faculty member, maybe even the dean of the college.
9. To check out early what their major is really all about -- what its basic concepts and its applications are.
8. To "bond" with a small number of other freshmen with similar interests and begin friendships that last all the way through their college careers.
7. To become part of a community of scholars and to learn about the links between research and teaching.
6. To get a solid foundation in their major that will enable them to do better in the courses they'll take later.
5. To learn things about themselves and their own interests that they might not otherwise have discovered.
4. To get to know the faculty and the faculty to know them.
3. To learn some of the "survival skills" associated with college -- how to study better, how to schedule time effectively, how to avoid getting overly distracted from the business of getting an education.
2. To take a small class, early in college, in a relatively informal setting.
1. To please their moms and dads.
