<p>I'm an incoming freshman to VCU's department of engineering as a mechanical engineering major and I was wondering how typical college classes are different from typical high school classes. Is there more WRITTEN homework in college than high school? How about just plain studying/cramming? I know most professors and other people say that 2-3 hours must be spent outside of class per credit hour per week studying, but how much time does a typical engineering (or any other related major) student ACTUALLY spend outside of class? Are college classes just lectures or do professors give classwork like in high school? For example, in-class worksheets that many high school teachers love to give. Are grades in college classes solely based on tests? If not, what else is graded? Participation? Homework? How much written homework is usually picked up for grading in comparison to high school? I'm just trying to gauge how difficult college classes will be in comparison to high school.</p>
<p>The typical math or science class in college (and I assume that’s true for engineering as well) will have weekly problem sets to be completed at home. Science classes might also have a weekly lab session with a separate lab report due each week. </p>
<p>Re work load: I’ve had weekly problem sets that I could complete in 2 hours and problem sets that took me 20 hours. (20 hours was for a graduate class though.) It really depends on your professor. It also varies how much the homework is worth. I’ve had homework worth 20% of my grade all the way up to 100% of my grade.</p>
<p>It’s simply impossible to give any general rule such as 45 hours per credit and whatnot. Some classes will require more, some less, few right at that mark. It depends entirely on what you take. </p>
<p>In engineering, you should expect that in most classes a significant portion of your grade (in the range of 20-50% usually) will come from some combination of homework and projects. Participation directly (as is in some humanities classes) will not be graded in engineering because engineering classes simply do not follow a format where that makes sense. However, I have had in class quizzes to ensure attendance, often these quizzes are not graded on correctness, but only that you turned it in. When present this is a very small portion. Almost everything will be homework, projects, and tests. </p>
<p>It’s really impossible to gauge how hard you will find it to high school. Compared to MY experience where I go and in MY experience in high school, you will spend a lot of time working on projects where you may be unsure of how much time and effort you were expected to spend. Homeworks are a similar case in many classes, in that you won’t know how much rigor you are expected to have in proofs. In other classes it’s less unknown, you just have a problem and you do it and give the numerical answer or diagram or whatever the problem calls for.</p>