Is it too much? My community college offers 8 week courses in the summer. One of the classes I want to take meets Monday-Thursday for two hours. The others are online courses.
There’s no one answer to that. 8 weeks is a little more than half a usual semester, so the pace is much faster. It depends on a few factors:
- What courses are they? It would not be a good idea necessarily to take several science, math, accounting, or similar classes in such a short time. Any class with lots of reading/writing is also going to demand a big chunk of your time.
- Are you planning on working? You will need to spend probably close to 6-8 hours a day (or more, if you are a student that has to put in more time than others) on these three courses.
- Have you taken online courses before? If so, you know that they can be more work because you have to teach yourself more of the material. And you will have to keep on top of assignments since they will be due in a more rapid fashion. If you have not taken online course, don't think that they are less work or that since you are not in class they will take less time. It depends on the course but some can be relatively easy to handle and others very difficult.
^ I agree with this completely.
If you’re going to take classes like accounting, they require a LOT of time. I took 9 units during a 6 week winter session at my CC and it was somewhat difficult. I didn’t take math/science courses, but the pace was a lot faster than I was used to. Granted, the classes were all online, but we were covering 2-3 chapters a week and then being tested on them by the end of the week, so there was absolutely no slacking. The hardest course for me was actually the introduction to sociology course I took. It was out of only 100 points, so missing even 1 question on the weekly quizzes could be costly. My final score was 91/100, so I barely skirted by with an A. The other two online classes were manageable as I wasn’t working, but the sociology class was tough.