<p>I am a high school senior. I have taken honors math and science classes and am currently taking AP Calculus BC. I am not taking AP Government because it is 30 pages of reading a night which is to much for me. Am a screwed for college? How tough is the workload going to be? I am going to major in engineering. If you are currently in college could you tell me what the workload is and if you were prepared?</p>
<p>theres A LOT of reading. reading, lecture, and discussion are the three primary methods of learning in college. im not sure about engineering major since im a social science major. i would say the workload for each college class is about equivalent to an honors or AP course, but because students typically only take about 3 to 4 classes a quarter/semester, the overall workload feels manageable.</p>
<p>!?>? REALLY? only 3 to 4 classes a quarter? that's insane! i'm taking @#%# 6 AP classes. They assign 50 pages of reading every night. I guess college will be breeze?</p>
<p>I have a block schedule so I only have 3 classes a day but that means that a class like calculus AB is crammed all into the fall or spring semester. Are you comparing it to a block schedule ap class or a regular ap class?</p>
<p>I can only think off the top of my head of a few schools where people are only expected to take 4 courses per semester and graduate on time (and only one where it's routine to take 3, and even there that's just your first semester). If you include schools on the quarter system it's more, but that's a different story.</p>
<p>It's hard for me to say whether my college workload is heavier than my high school workload because they're so differently structured. In high school, I was taking 10 or 11 courses at a time and the work was mostly in papers or tests every two weeks and/or lots of junk busywork worksheets. In college, finals and midterms are much more intense and some classes will have weekly problem sets that can take hours. The intense periods in college are more intense than anything in high school ever was (yes, even compared to the last week of the marking period when I'd left most of the semester's work to the last minute AND had a 20 hour a week EC commitment...), but things are more predictable (in general the syllabi are much more reliable) and often more flexible. College has ended up being easier for me though, because I do better with exams on difficult material than with tons of small busywork. I haven't taken any humanities classes yet, but I've heard those tend to crush you with tons and tons of reading.</p>
<p>yes think of it like the block schedule. you get an entire class packed into one quarter/semester. so its not exactly a breeze, but the workload is still less than 6 APs.</p>
<p>How many APs do you think it is equivalent to? How hard were your APs though? They can very a lot.</p>
<p>I'm a dual-enrollment student at a local university and I find the classes I take at the university to be much easier than my classes at my high school and I do not even take AP classes at the high school. When I was taking Pre-Cal at the college, my classmates were taking it at school. I had class only on M & W for 1 hr 15 min while they had the same class for 2 hours M-F. I took my final two weeks before they took theirs and had three days per week free time. All in all, I find college workloads to be much lighter than high school, especially if you're taking 6 AP's (whoa). Anyway, if you're on this web site, you will most likely do very well in college. MOst of the people who do not succeed just don't have a strong enough desire to do so...</p>
<p>I was in 7 IB classes senior year... workload is way less 1st semester in college.</p>
<p>That said, you aren't the cream of the crop anymore, and depending on your school, grades could be significantly lower. (avg 1st sem gpa at my school was ~2.9)</p>
<p>It really depends on the classes you are taking, and to a lesser extent, the school you go to. Yeah while some lower division/GE courses can be deceivingly easy, don't worry, it gets much harder lol. You're supposed to have a decently easy time your first semester/quarter, to allow you to become comfortable with college. But once you get into advanced courses, believe me, it won't be easy.</p>
<p>College is all about secretly pulling all nighters in the 24 hour library. Meyer library rocks!</p>
<p>For me college went from hard to easy. I was in a tough engineering program for two years and I spent most of my evening hours working. There was a lot of work to do but I could handle it. I was actually eager to do it. I would start my problem sets the same day they were assigned. My only problem was I never fully understood anything and I had miserable grades on my exams. After I transferred to a different school I stuck with MechE and after a semester my engineering skills improved dramatically. As my skills improved it took me less time to get my work done. I also retained the material better and that cut down on study time. </p>
<p>The school definitely matters. The first engineering program that I first went to required a lot of its students. The workload was a lot heavier and the work was much more intense. The teaching was terrible and you had to learn a lot of it on your own. Another difference I noticed that at my current school the use of computer programming, particularly Matlab, not nearly as emphasized. It is not taught in detail until junior year. Right now my workload does not seem heavy. I am definitely not stressed out about it. I have no idea how much work the other engineering majors get, so I cant speak about those programs.</p>