<p>Hi,
I was wondering if anyone knew what the average number uchicago freshman take during each of the autumn, winter and spring semesters.</p>
<p>Thank you</p>
<p>do you consider seminars and workshops as courses? those are pass and fail courses. If you don’t count them then average should be 4.</p>
<p>Some take 3, but I think the majority take 4 (especially for winter and spring – some start slow with 3 in the fall). Taking 3-4 classes is considered a full time student. </p>
<p>You’ll also have a writing seminar for your Humanities Core class, which meets about 3 times a quarter.</p>
<p>The minimum to graduate is 42 courses, which on the four-year plan would mean taking 3 courses half the time and 4 courses half the time. I think most people graduate with more than 42 courses, though. It’s extremely unusual for anyone to take 5 courses in a quarter (and anyone who does has to pay extra to do that), and taking fewer than 3 means losing your full-time student status. So essentially 3 or 4 courses is your only choice. </p>
<p>Unlike most colleges, Chicago does not assign different values to different courses – no 2 credit-hour, 3 credit-hour, 4 credit-hour courses. Some courses have extras attached, like labs or the writing seminar, but you don’t get extra credit for that.</p>
<p>I think a fair number of first-years start out taking 3 courses, but nothing like a majority of them. One thing to take into consideration is that for many students there is little or no flexibility in their first year. They will be taking Hum, and maybe Sosc. If they are pre-med, or want to major in a lab science, they will be taking at least one intro science course, and most people who want to major in Econ have to take an introductory course to do that. (And prospective pre-meds and Econ majors make up about half of any first-year class.) Most people will usually be taking a math course. So that’s at least four courses per quarter right there. Taking three may mean you wind up behind on something. Also, some people like to save their three-course quarters for things like going abroad, writing an honors thesis, applying to grad school.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’d say a majority take 4, but taking 3 is not uncommon. Your hum is already decided for you, as well as an introductory science sequence if that’s what your major is. The vast majority of students also take math during their first quarter.</p>
<p>I took 4 classes myself: Philosophical Perspectives on the Humanities, Calc, Intro to computer science (major req), Intro to linguistics (elective). This quarter, all my classes are the same except for ling, which has been replaced with core bio.</p>
<p>I took three classes my first quarter, just to ease into things a little. I could probably have handled four just fine - but I took Human Being and Citizen (Hum), German and Mathematics. I’ve taken four every quarter since then.
Some Advisers (the faculty member who you meet during Orientation week and continue to see for the next four years) swear by the first-quarter-three-classes method, and students are often known to take three when they’re doing a particularly difficult major class, or have an internship.</p>
<p>@OxalisWombo
It sounds like you are a double major in Computer Science and Linguistics. I’m planning to double major in compsci and ling also, and I’m curious about the workload. Did you find that you had almost no free time? How are the teachers? What’s the program like in general?</p>