How do you keep track of your General Education requirements?
I have heard countless stories of students who
took a class that they did not need to take and wasted their
time. For example, one of my friends took an extra Area D class
and could not graduate in four years. The reason why he took it
is because a General Education counselor told him to. You cannot
rely on one person only to see if you are in track for
Graduation. You also have to rely on yourself.
In order to keep track of your General Education requirements, so that you don’t waste your time, is to read the catalog for your specific term/year. You can find it by visiting https://catalog.csus.edu/. The catalog contains lots of information about California State University, Sacramento, such as what is required for each major, Generation Education Requirements, and Financial Aid and Registration Information. To find your specific term year, it is usually the year you attended Sacramento State, or you can also check on your Student Center, under “My Academics”. For instance, my specific term/year is 2018.
To look at the General Education requirements, click on the catalog website. When you scroll down, click on “Archives” and click on what your Catalog year is. For instance, I will choose the 2018-2019 Catalog Year. For this article I am going to stick with the 2019-2020 Catalog Year.
After clicking on your Catalog Year, click on the “+“ sign next to Colleges to bring down more options then click the “+” sign next to “office of Academic Affairs” then click on “General Education” and finally click “General Education (Prior to Fall 2018)”.
On this page, you can see all of the General Education Requirements divided by each category and all of the classes that complete the requirements.
Let’s look at Area A: Basic Subjects as an example. Click on “Area A: Basic Subjects” and it will automatically school down to it.
As you can see, the Area A: Basic Subject has listed all of the possible options of classes to take. It is categorized as A1: Oral Communication, A2: Written Communication, A3: and Critical Thinking. Once you know the classes you are going to take for each category, then open up an Excel document to type it out.
Having an Excel document containing all of the classes you plan to take is a very organized method of organizing your General Education Requirements. I listed out the categories, then added the Class Abbreviation, and then the actual name of each class. COMS 5: The Communication Experience, ENGL 5: Accelerated Academic Literacies, and PHIL 4: Critical Thinking are examples you can take.
You can repeat the process of choosing the classes you want to take and then typing it out on Excel for the other Areas, such as Area B: The Physical and its Life Forms, Area C: The Arts and Humanities, Area D: The individual Society, and Area E: Understanding Personal Development. There are also additional requirements for General Education, but that will be listed in the Excel document that I will attach.
Note:
- Instead of looking on the catalog website, you can go to under “My Academics” see what the Graduation Requirements you need, but I think the catalog website is much easier to read.
- Instead of using Excel, you could also use the “GE and Graduation” worksheet that Sacramento State’s General Education provides and that will also be attached.
- Instead of using Excel, you could use the “Smart Planner” on the Student Center to choose classes you plan to take. Using the “Smart Planner” lets Sacramento State know how many numbers of classes to offer.