5 Things to Consider When Scheduling Your Classes at MSU

Let me just start off by saying, my goodness, scheduling your classes is stressful AF. You don’t want to choose a class where the credits won’t go toward your major because who wants to take a class for no reason? Thanks to the large amount of students who have attended MSU, there are some tips and tricks to scheduling the perfect semester. Below are five things to consider when scheduling your classes at MSU!

1. Koofers is your best friend. BEST. FRIEND.

When I say best friend people, I mean it can save your GPA. I’m talking to you, freshmen! Koofers is a site where students can search their school and then search classes or professors within their school. Students use Koofers to comment on classes they have taken or rate a professor on their difficulty. This is especially helpful for gen-ed classes like ISS, IAH, ISB etc., since everyone has to take these. You can even sometimes find flashcards and cheat sheets from prior students in the class. The best thing about Koofers though, is if you are trying to choose between two different classes, Koofers can tell you which one will probably be easier and which professor to choose. So, if you don’t know what Koofers is (I didn’t the first few months of my freshman year, but shootout to the girl from my ISS class for telling me), SIGN UP RN!

2. Go to your advisor and MAKE them spell out every class you need to take.

I have seen four different advisors over my college years (mostly because I changed my major), so it’s totally normal to have to sift through some before you find a good match. But I’m serious guys, it’s so important because advisors can lay out all the classes you need to take before you sign up, so when the time comes, you aren’t spending eight hours trying to decide between a PSY class and a GEO class. You will feel much better knowing you’re on the right track to graduating instead of getting to senior year and realizing you need to take 3 more classes than you thought.

3. Don’t try to jam pack your schedule unless you want to die a miserable death.

This is not just for the science or math majors, this is for every major, because contrary to popular belief every major has hard classes. So I am telling you right now, don’t try to jam all your hard classes into one semester unless you want your GPA to shrivel up and die. Spread out your hard classes, and also don’t try to take 18 credits in one semester. Yes, it sounds good now, but when you are one week away from spring break and you realize you have five papers due, three exams and two projects….well, it won’t look like such a good idea anymore.

4. Try to avoid those early morning classes and Friday classes.

This is my advice to all those people (a.k.a the majority of college students) who have a hard time waking up early, it’s better to be sure you won’t be skipping class because “you’re too tired” than trying to get all your classes done early. Most 8 a.m. classes take attendance very seriously since a lot of students choose to skip, so try to avoid too many morning classes (unless you are a rare breed of early morning risers.) Also, after your freshman year, there aren’t too many classes that are on Fridays, so if you can avoid that day, please do. It’s really nice having an extra day to just relax or if you need a day to just focus on studying. Even if it’s not Friday, I would highly recommend trying to find one day in the week where you only have one class or none at all.

5. Tread carefully with online classes

I’ve had friends who have taken online classes that thought they would be easy, and they ended up failing. If you are too busy to take a class in person, online classes can be very helpful because you can do the work on your own time, BUT it is very easy to forget about the assignments. I would ask around your friend group to figure out the online classes to avoid and the ones that are easy. Also another good tip is to take online classes with a friend, because if you are both taking the same class at the same time, you can hold each other accountable and also work on the exams/assignments together.

Do you have any more advice when it comes to scheduling your classes at MSU? Share in the comments!

*This is a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.