First Year Experience
The First Year Experience is an academic program designed to fully integrate new students into the academic and cultural community of the College of Charleston. All of the courses give new students an opportunity to work closely with top-level faculty, to meet other new students at the beginning of the school year, smooth their transition to college, and provide them with the skills that will help them succeed throughout their academic careers. Fostering these connections and skills in the first year is crucial to success at the College, graduation, and beyond. To delve more deeply into the First Year Experience courses, please visit our Courses section of the webpage.
In 2019 College of Charleston's FYE ranked nationally in the top 11 by US News and World Report
Read more about our ranking
FYE in the News
- FYE Outside the Classroom During a Pandemic
- Financial Literacy Class Capitalizes Returns as Online Course
- CofC Course Explores Charleston’s Role in Presidential Politics
- College of Charleston students hot on trail of medieval Muslim scholar and the food he ate
- Charleston as A Classroom: A First-Year Seminar with Dale Rosengarten
- FYE Professor featured for talk, "To Touch Impossible Things: Designing Haptic Sensations for Virtual Worlds"
- FYE Professor wins South Carolina's Folk Heritage Award for traditional arts advocacy
- Spring 2019 Faculty Lecture Series Featuring FYE Professor and Poet Laureate of SC
- FYE Inspires Latin American and Caribbean Studies Major
- Chef Delights Students with Mouth-Watering Lecture
- FitCatz: A First-Year Experience to Remember
- First-Year Students Face Ultimate Test: Running a Marathon
See what past (and current) courses are doing!
- Spanish Panorama: The Culture, Language, and Geography of Spain (Google Slides)
- Beyond the Grave (Kizoa)
- Photography and Memory (Twitter video)
- Special OPS Therapy Tactics (YouTube)
- Roads of Silk, Streets of Water (YouTube)
- Sex, Politics, and American Culture (YouTube)
- China to a Tea: An Introduction to Chinese Culture, History, and Religion (Google Slides)
Students in China to a Tea: An Introduction to Chinese Culture, History,
and Religion celebrate the Chinese New Year with a tea ceremony.
If you are an entering first-year student at the College of Charleston and feel that you should be exempt from the First-Year Experience requirement, download the waiver form and either email it to fye@cofc.edu or deliver it to the Lightsey Basement Suite B53.
AP, IB, or dual-enrollment courses are not considered when applying for an FYE Waiver.