Plan for PWR
Leave room in your schedule for PWR
Units
As you plan your quarter, leave room on your study list for the 4 units you’ll need for your PWR section. You will get your assignment before Axess opens for enrollment, which should make it easier to plan your schedule to include your PWR course, however the sync between assignment and official enrollment takes a day or two. Please don’t enroll in more than 16 units before your PWR section assignment appears on your Axess study list.
Completing Your PWR Preference Form
In ranking your preferences, consider which sections would work best with your overall schedule. PWR courses meet 2 times a week (MW or TTh) for 110 minutes. Try to leave room in your schedule for at least 3 or 4 options as you start to set up your study list; the greater the number of time slots you include in your preference form, the better your chances of getting a section that will fit easily into your schedule. It is not possible for every student to get their top choice, so make sure you have a few options that will work for you.
Please note that it’s fine if you have your COLLEGE course and your PWR 1 course scheduled in the same quarter. The courses complement each other well in terms of the types of writing and intellectual work students do in them.
Consider course themes
In addition to thinking about which sections best match your schedule, consider which themes most intrigue you. Watch course videos and read through the written descriptions on our PWR Courses site. Keeping scheduling constraints in mind, select seven sections which most appeal to you, whether because their topics relate to your intended field of study or offer you an opportunity to engage with issues or ideas that you haven’t had the opportunity to work with previously in an academic context.
Our system will place students into their highest choice, however with hundreds of students in each quarter, not everyone will get their top choice, and yes, you could get your seventh pick. If you don’t get your top choice, don’t worry: PWR courses share the same required assignment sequence, offer individual conferences for major assignments, feature comparable classroom activities, and require roughly the same amount of work. Most importantly, the focus on writing, revision, rhetoric, and research is consistent across all PWR sections. Themes are intentionally broad enough to allow an exploration of many, many topics under one theme's umbrella.
Plan for the first week
You can’t “shop” PWR by attending multiple sections. If you miss any of the first two days of your assigned class, you are automatically dropped from the section, and you cannot be added to another section by going to that section. You need to be in your assigned class, on time, to avoid being dropped. If you have an unavoidable health issue or a complication with your travel schedule, send an email message to the instructor and pwrcourses@stanford.edu BEFORE class begins to explain why you will be absent. If you have been dropped, you must petition to re-enroll in the section. You can only be added back onto the class roster if space is available. Another note on the first week--this is the only time when section changes are allowed, and only before a section has met twice. (This means that for a M/W class, you would need to be enrolled in class before the Wednesday's section time, even though this is only halfway through week one.)