As a part of the Honors college, I'm in a few really small classes: I took honors calc 2 and I'm in honors calc 3 right now, and both classes had fewer than 15 students. This semester, my professor knows all of our names and because he's not stressed by a large class, we really get time to just talk to him, which is really nice. I came to college with most of my basics out of the way, but I've been told that classes like Comp 1 and Comp 2, which are required, typically have over 200 people in them, but if you take the honors classes, which are capped at something like 30 students, you'll have a much better class experience. My favorite class is Intro to Design and Graphics, which the students call studio. It's an architecture class that I'm required to take as an architectural engineering major, and although it's a lot of work and I complain about it whenever I'm given the chance, it's very different from the rest of my classes, and extremely interesting. My least favorite class so far has been Intro to CEES (civil engineering and environmental science). We talked about bridges and dams all semester and everyone just played on their laptops through all of class. It was mind-numbingly dull. It depends on who you're friends with--I live on the national merit floor, so sleeping is less something we need and more something we do in between studying, tests, and classes--all of my friends made 4.0s last semester, and our majors are engineering, pre-med, math, and pre-orthopedic. But my roommate was in a sorority and she was really busy, so she studied a lot like once every two weeks, keeping me up to all hours. It really depends on who you're friends with. Same with intellectual conversations--you can find those kinds of people if you want to, but if not, then you can find those kinds of people too. Competition definitely varies by major--architecture students can be pretty competitive, but the Arch Es (architectural engineers) are more like a community. It's clear who of us excels in certain areas, but we're not very competitive. Again, studio is the most unique class I've taken. I've hand-built structures from chipboard (sort of like cardboard) that have taken me on average 15 hours, and my final took over 40 hours to construct. I've used a laser cutter to make a screen, built projects in wood shop, and even used playdough and duct tape for a project. My major is Architectural Engineering, which is a part of the Civil Engineering and Environmental Science department in the College of Engineering. Honestly, I'm not a big fan of my department here. There are only, at most, 15 other people in my major that are freshman, and less than 10 people graduate from my major every year. So while I'm content at OU, if you can afford to go somewhere else for architectural engineering, I would strongly recommend that you do--I'm currently planning on transferring to UT, where my program has almost 200 undergraduates. I do not spend time with my professors outside of class. OU is not known for it's strong academic requirements, but you can find good academics if you look for them. One current professor who I met at Camp Crimson (sort of like orientation), Professor Kyle Harper, did his Bachelor's here then went on to Harvard for his master's. I also know we have a Rhodes scholar this year, so good academics can be found here. I would say that this school is geared toward getting a job--there are a ton of career fairs every year, and I'm constantly bombarded by emails from career services.
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