I am an incoming freshman at UB, majoring in engineering. I am also looking to minor in architecture and I am part of the honors college.
I plan on taking:
Physics 1 honors (4 credits no lab)
Calc 2 honors(4 credits)
Chem 1(4 credits)
Architectural sketching(3 credits)
And engineering and honors seminars(4 credits)
I know 19 is a lot, but I have the credits for calc 1 and 2 and I just want to take again as a refresher and to make sure everything was covered. Also I have the credits for physics 1 and 2 but I honestly didn’t understand physics 2 very well and would like to take physics 1 at the college level. I feel these two classes will be fairly easy for me, but I haven’t taken any chem since ninth grade so that might be a struggle. Also I want to play club feild hockey. But for reference in high school I took 5 ap classes junior and senior year played feild hockey, was in 3 clubs and danced about 20 hours a week. Still I’m afraid 19 credits is too much?
Am I taking too many classes?
Is there a study abroad component that resulted in this being posted in the “Study Abroad” forum?
Overloading first semester as a freshman is usually a bad idea. College is very different than HS and may take some getting used to. Having said that, “seminar” courses are often rather easy, and it sounds like you’re re-taking courses in two subjects.
I think there’s a general rule of thumb that for every hour spent in class, plan to spend at least 2-3 hours doing work for that class. How many hours a week do those classes meet? I’m guessing that’s at least fifteen hours a week in class. 45 hours a week, at least, just in schoolwork and classes. How many hours for field hockey? Two hours a day, six days a week? Not including games, especially if the games involve travel. Factor in sleeping hours, eating, showering, etc… Let’s estimate that each day you use up ten hours just on eating, sleeping, bathing, etc…
A week has 168 hours. -45+ for school work, -70 for sleeping/eating/bathing, -12 hours for field hockey. That leaves 41 hours for everything else. No doubt I have underestimated some of this, so let’s deduct 12 hours for more class work, sleeping/eating, and field hockey. That’s 29 hours. I haven’t included any time for socializing. Let’s deduct Friday and Saturday night socializing, another ten hours. So that should give you a spare 19 hours a week. If a family visit or day trip anywhere comes up, you’ll be cutting it close. You might have a few hours left each week to relax, but remember you have to do laundry, run to the store, reply to emails or texts, call your family. I think a part time job would not be possible. If you are applying for jobs, internships, research positions, or fellowships, etc…you will be very pressed for time.
Seems pretty typical for an engineering curriculum. My D had a very similar schedule except had her mandatory oral communications class along with her honors seminar. Most first year engineers at my D’s school take some combination of calc, physics, and chem (or CS one semester and chem the next if they are on a EE/ECE track), and two other courses if they want to stay on track to graduate in 8 semesters.
Talk to your advisor to be sure this is typical at your school. That will be your best advice!
IMO for a first time freshman that would be too much. You should start with a more modest number of hours and as you get used to the studying required you can ramp up. You could do it but you may crash and burn.
As previous posters have said, this is a heavy schedule but seems pretty typical for an ambitious engineering student. Since I went to a school with a quarter system, I took at least 18 credit hours every semester, usually at least 19 and I was fine. Can you skip a field hockey practice here and there? You may want to find out before embarking on both at the same time. Be sure to keep up with problem sets in Calc and Physics as a refresher as you go. As someone previously said, if you drop anything (i.e. if you have to because you’re not supposed to overload as @stradmom said), drop either physics or chemistry; you have your whole first year to get your background courses out of the way.
Try the old final exams for calculus 1 and 2 at your college to see if you really need to retake the course(s). If you know the material well, do not retake, since it will just be added time commitment for nothing. Do the same with the old final exams for physics. If you want to add a minor, it is best to take all advanced placement that you reasonably can in order to clear additional schedule space.
1 credit is assumed to be 3 hours of work per week of in-class and out-of-class time. So 19 credits are assumed to be 57 hours of work per week. A more typical 15-16 credits are assumed to be 45-48 hours of work per week. Courses with projects, labs, or art (architecture) studio tend to be higher on the workload than courses with just lecture and discussion.
As noted in reply #8, the standard schedule is:
MTH 141 (4) calculus 1
CHE 107 (3.5) chemistry 1
CHE 127 (0.5) chemistry 1 lab
EAS 199 (3) seminar
ENG 105 (4) English 1
Suggest that you consider modifying it the following way:
A. Based on how well you do on MTH 141 and 142 old final exams, choose your math course accordingly (MTH 141, 142, or 241).
B. If you need to take PHY 107 and/or PHY 108 based on the old final exams, and you are in an advanced enough math course (see the physics course prerequisites), you may want to take one of them instead of CHE 107/127, since physics is typically a more critical prerequisite to later courses (check your curriculum specifically). If you do that, be sure to take CHE 107/127 later.
C. If you have AP English language score of 4+, you can skip ENG 105 and choose some other course instead (architecture?).