<p>I heard that a typical Caltech course load is 5 per term... would it be unfeasible to do 6 if one of them was a PE course? rather than use the elective spot for that? Thanks.</p>
<p>I have a similar question along those lines. How often and for how long do classes meet? Can someone give a run down of what their typical weekly schedule is like? Thanks.</p>
<p>omni, PE courses count only for 3 units and you can choose whatever classes you want for any given term. I took 8 classes freshman year first term without overloading because several of those were low-unit classes. "Regular" classes are for the most part all nine units. So 5*9 (45) is a good average for most Caltech students. You need at least 40 units per term on average to graduate in 4 years. And anything more than 51(for freshmen) or 54(for upperclassmen) is considered overloading. So adding a PE class to 5 regular classes is only 48 units which is quite manageable.</p>
<p>Durran, your answer depends on the class. Most 9-unit classes have roughly 3 hours of lecture every week. This can be in 3 1-hour slots, 2 1 hour and a half slots, or just 1 3-hour slot. A typical schedule would probably involve an average of 3 hours or so of lecture every day, with a bit more or less on some days. On tuesday, for example, I have 7 hours of lecture, but then on Friday, I have none at all. Hope that helps.</p>
<p>Thank you. Your answer was very helpful silver-yms.</p>
<p>thanks for your help; good to know.</p>
<p>Just remember that the number of units you're doing isn't necessarily indicative of how much work you have or how hard the work is. I did 49 units first term, 54 second term, and I'm doing 48 now... I can say for sure that my second term was very laid back (probably did about 30 - 35 hours of course-related stuff a week), and that this term is very much driving me up the wall. And this isn't even because of pass-fail/grades.</p>
<p>On a related note, does anyone know why CS11 is still a 3 unit course? I think most people put in about 9 hours a week.</p>
<p>You should have taken C++ with me :)</p>
<p>I took CS11 first term freshman year in C++ with no prior knowledge of C... fun stuff =)</p>
<p>for planning which classes to take and stuff, are there like advisers that we talk to in the fall?</p>
<p>also, when do we register for classes?</p>
<p>yes, and the week before classes (i.e. after you arrive)</p>
<p>Nocloud</p>
<p>Yes, there are advisers which you talk to in the fall. I never really talked to mine much, and I ended up making a few questionable decisions as far as which courses to take. I have no idea how helpful they are in planning things out. However, I will say that it will save you some stress later on if make your 4 year plan now using the requirements for the course catalog. I did that this year and it was helpful to see where I would have problems due to course load, and subsequently adjust things like humanities classes to make things more palatable.
When you do this, keep in mind that like 70% of people come in to tech expecting to be Phys majors, and maybe 20% stay the course. A lot of things can happen, but it should not be hard to plan things such that you can take change paths and not kill yourself with work.</p>
<p>As far as when you register for classes, they send you a class choice form in the summer. Somehow they screwed up my electives badly, and I ended up taking a completely different set first term. The schedule they give you is just a rough one, and you can change it online once you get to tech.</p>
<p>Oh, and regarding CS11, the C track hasn't been so bad...~4-5 hours of work each week. I've pretty much gotten to the point that I'm familiar enough with the peculiarities of the language that I can eliminate compiler errors after about 4 attempts. </p>
<p>C++ is much more of a pain from what I can imagine. Sparse vectors, matrix multiplication....aye</p>
<p>Ditto to the part about planning out your four years. I didn't do my planning until halfway through second term, and I wish now that I could have made some minor changes to which classes I took the first two terms. Mostly I just wanted to space things out so that I wouldn't have a particularly easy frosh year and a particularly difficult s'more/junior year and stuff like that... nothing major, I guess.</p>