spectrum: academics

Here are a few staff favorites of the courses we’ve taken (and loved) at Columbia. For more tips and tricks to navigating Columbia and Barnard academic departments, check out Required Reading.

Though Columbia College, School of General Studies, and Barnard require at least two science courses for graduation, don’t worry if you’re not so scientifically inclined. You don’t have to take General Chemistry or Cell Biology. We’ve consulted Columbia's list of courses designed for nonscience majors, the Columbia Undergrad Listing of Professor Ability (CULPA), and course reviews on Vergil+ to find courses offered in fall 2019 that will allow you to knock out the science requirement without tanking your GPA.

Fulfilling all of your Modes of Thinking requirements can be a challenging thing to do. Often, you’ll look through the list of classes and find one that immediately interests you because it’s related to your potential major or minor, but every once in a while, you’ll stumble across a Mode of Thinking that you’re not quite sure how to fulfill. To provide some inspiration about classes you can take for those difficult-to-fulfill requirements, here’s a list of some highly recommended classes for each Mode of Thinking.

Class of 2023: Welcome to college! You’re going to take over 60 classes throughout your years at Columbia and Barnard. Apart from the required Core and Foundation classes, the rest is pretty much up to your choice. You may not know what classes to pick immediately, but we’ve got you covered. Here’s our list of some interesting intro-level lectures you may want to try out your first semester!

We hate to break it to you, but we officially have less than ten class days left, which of course means that summer is just around the corner (yay!) but also that finals are fast approaching (boo!). We can totally understand if you’re feeling stressed and a little paralyzed just thinking about the workload. But if your study plan is to binge-watch Netflix and then pull a few consecutive all nighters in Butler, we’ll be blunt: That’s a guaranteed recipe for disaster. Instead, consider spacing things out a little this round by creating a study schedule. While we can’t guarantee success, we can promise you that with a study schedule, you’ll (hopefully) maintain better mental health during this trying season because you can at least rest assured that you’ve tried your best.

It’s hard to get out of the lazy cycle of going to Butler every day. Even though you slightly hate it, at least it has always been there for you. As you may be realizing now, it can also become increasingly stuffy and draining to study in the same library every day—especially Butler. During midterms and finals season, it’s especially annoying to try to find a seat. So why don’t you try to discover a new library? Who knows, you may just end up finding your new favorite study spot!

Economics is one of the most popular majors here at Columbia and Barnard, and it makes sense. Doing the major seems like a direct way to a successful career on Wall Street.

The weather is finally getting better, Low Beach is popping, and the fertilizer smells terrible. Midterms just ended, but it feels like we had a millisecond of a break to enjoy the sun before the dread starts to build again. Yes, it’s that time of the semester again. The terrible f-word that everyone loves to hate: finals. But fear not. Spectrum is here to alleviate the pain of finals season with five tips to stay afloat during the next few weeks.