It's tough picking the best four classes listed in the course catalog each semester.

With a 700-plus page course catalog, it's hard to choose classes, whether students are looking to fill up on guts or tackle a challenging workload.

Surfing the CUE Guide in search of guts takes several hours. But the effort is rewarded with ample free time which can then be spent watching TV, napping or socializing at the Grille.

Other courses are more difficult but offer the chance to learn about an intriguing subject taught by a captivating professor.

Whether one's goal is to find guts or intellectual stimulation, students have many different methods of choosing their classes.

One Kirkland House junior, who requested anonymity, volunteered his Sstrategy for navigating through the catalog to find rewarding courses.

"First, you have to dig through the CUE guide--including back issues--and look for classes that get higher than a 3.5 [rating] overall and under three for reading, workload and difficulty," he says.

"Also, if the CUE feedback was under 50 percent, that's good," he says. "It means most people bagged the section where they handed out the forms."

The junior adds students should check out how many people are sitting in the front row of the class.

"If a lot of people are in the first row, then forget it, it's too competitive," he says.

Students should also look at how their fellow classmates are attired, he says, because "a lot of baseball caps are good, ties are bad."

For those seeking a semester without work and stress, the Kirkland junior recommends General Education 121, "A History of Zoos" and Anthropology 159: "Museums and Representations: Exhibiting Cultures."

And he advises undergraduates to take Quantitative Reasoning 10, a course from which many have been exempted, but can be taken for full credit "whether or not you've passed the QRR."

Great Classes, Great Teachers

But while upperclass students have devised a methodical approach to finding guts, first-years must proceed by trial and error in searching for the perfect classes.

Many first-years interviewed say they pick their classes according to how good the professors are.