Grape190190Um, I'm probably switching degree, so... erm. There are good things about it: notably the fact that you get a year in America and the small course-size, which makes it really easy to make some great friends. But I didn't really enjoy the first year of the course. It was essentially the first year of a History degree, except with more slightly more essays, three exams rather than one, and absolutely no choice about what modules you take. Ultimately, in first year, you take two American history modules that are open to History students in first and second year, your forced to take Spanish rather than choosing your language, and you do a fairly mediocre CAS-only literature module, which basically involves reading 4 novels and writing about them.
Now, they tell you that, hey, it's first year - you're just getting a grounding in the Americas, and then next year you specialise in the areas you want. Except that's a lie. You have to pick four modules in second year. One has to be Spanish or Spanish and this bizarre research thingy, which sounds like even less fun that Spanish. As for the other three, CAS theoretically offers eleven modules in its own right. Of those, this year SIX aren't running for one reason or another. SIX. Moreover, you have to take one Latin America module and one North America module.
Soooo, that means that for Latin America I had to do either: "Modern Mexico", "Caribbean Literature" or "The Cultural History of Food in Latin America". For North America, I had a choice between "Reform, Revolt and Reaction" (which is basically 20th century history with a focus on Civil Rights, I think) or "American Historical Cinema". Now, given that I don't want to do Lit and I don't want to study food or cinema, that left me with only two choices that were even remotely viable.
Then for the last module, we're allowed to escape to either the Politics department to do intro to US Pol, the English department to do one of three modules on US lit, or the film department to do intro to film studies or something (or you can do another CAS module - as if anyone isn't going to have exhausted their list of interesting stuff CAS offers).
So yeah. I'm trying to switch to a different degree. But lots of people really enjoy our course, so you shouldn't just go on one view!
I got this in the form of an unsigned rep comment, but I'm assuming this is you...?
You're a native speaker. Woah. I dunno what they're going to do with you, no. I'd email someone and ask. I guess there wouldn't be much point in putting you in the most advanced language centre class.
As for American unis: you get asked where you want to go, and then assuming there's enough space, you get to go there. Apparently, for every uni except Columbia, there's usually enough room for everyone, although a little bit of prodding and poking goes on to get people to change theire minds (they seem, for instance, to have a thing about getting people to go to Latin American unis, which is a tad unpopular). As for Columbia, there's only ever two spaces and always loads of applicants: the decision's made on the basis of, 1. Exam/essay performance in first year, 2. Reports from tutors, and 3. Interviews. I may be imagining that third criterion but I don't think so.
And no worries, my pleasure.