Letisha Brown hears rumors. Wherever the University of Pittsburgh freshman goes, the stories about unsavory professors and brain-wracking classes follow.

Ms. Brown, a first-term freshman from Pullman, Wash., came to Pittsburgh in late August with 10 hours of college credit already attached to her transcript.

She has transformed from a timid but determined pre-pharmacy major to a resilient and assured neuroscience major in just one month.

The gossip about what courses to take and which to avoid has had little effect on her decisions. The negative chatter about a folklore class sounded serious although she said she wouldn't have taken it anyway.

Even though she hears many reviews, Ms. Brown still carries an aura of suspicion of her fellow classmates.

"When you hear those rumors, you have to assess the person's credibility. Whoever it is could be pulling a D because they pull D's. Sometimes they aren't as clever as you are."

As thousands of freshmen descended on private and public universities, the indecision and sometimes convoluted process of choosing a life's direction and engaging courses once again returned to students' brains.

With courses running the gamut of subjects -- literature to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics -- choosing the right classes requires time, patience and, as most counselors say, an open mind.

"We are in essence students' departmental home base until they declare their home base," said Jay Devine, associate dean of the Carnegie Mellon University College of Humanities and Social Sciences and the director of the college's academic advising center.

Dr. Devine is in charge of navigating some 671 undergraduate students through the academic terrain of finding a major and choosing interesting classes. Most of the students his staff advises stay undeclared until the first-term of their junior year. This means students have an opportunity to decide a life course and then adapt when a class dampens their interest or a course touches a nerve.

"You have to help them make choices that not only spark their interest, but foster exploration as well," he said.

Freshmen entering a new academic environment often have to compete with upperclassmen for some of the most interesting class rosters. Higher education caters to students who have invested the most time in their education and completed their general requirements first.

So, the first obstacle most underclassmen have to overcome is their general requirements or general education classes. These courses generally last the first two or three semesters of a college student's four- to five-year education.

General requirements are the foundation of every goal-oriented student's respective major.

The requirements also are some of the most mundane and least interesting course work of students' college careers. Basic math and general English composition bog down the list of building-block classes that give new students enough basic information to survive the daunting task of completing upper-level course work.

"General education classes are independent of whatever a student's major is," said Dr. Devine. "They are what every reasonably educated citizen should know something about.''

He said the classes simultaneously give students a broad-based exposure to teaching methods and show how different departments work, many times laying the foundation for a choice of major.

Inside the University of Pittsburgh College of Arts and Sciences Advising Center, the team of 26 advisers is just beginning to sort through some of the freshmen readying themselves for the spring semester. Four advisers each handle 100 of the students who come through its doors and 22 advise about 200 students each. The process of whittling down a student's interest while trying to sort out his or her life's direction often takes multiple visits.

"When you work with students, sometimes they have never heard about neuroscience or anthropology because they've never had it in school," said Barbara Mellix, assistant dean of the University of Pittsburgh College of Arts and Sciences and the director of its advising center.

The center advises about 5,000 students annually.

"We are in essence helping them understand who they are. It's a self-discovery where they come in and say, 'I want to be a doctor.' "

For Ms. Brown, it was her general psychology class that cemented her interest in neuroscience, but with other students, it's sometimes an easy grade and the affability of a professor that drives their motives for taking classes and choosing majors.

And with the rise of Internet sites that purport to give students the upper hand in class scheduling, students often find themselves inundated with information on how to go about selecting general education courses and even majors.

Web sites such as www.ratemyprofessors.com claim to give students a preview into a professor's class and whether the class is worth their time and effort. The Web site offers students a chance to rate a professor based on grading, teaching method and even looks, but it also does so with little safeguard against foul play. There are no restrictions against professors rating themselves or students carrying out personal vendettas against professors who gave them bad grades.

Camiele White, a Pitt freshman from South Carolina, couldn't care less about the postings she's read on the Web site or even the gossip about an astronomy class she has heard causes students to get lost in the details of the cosmos.

Ms. White is setting the foundation for an eventual career in biomedical research. She prefers a challenge, not a gamble on hearsay about a course.

"I couldn't bring myself to pick a class based on getting a good grade," said Ms. White. "It's whether I'm interested in it or not that drives me to choose a class. And if it's challenging, that makes it all the better -- otherwise I'm bored."