<p>Why do certain colleges have different norms/requirements for number of courses taken a semester? </p>
<p>At a friend's college, barely anyone takes more than 4 classes except for engineers who take 5. At another friends college, he was shocked that someone would only take 4 classes, as 5 was the norm at his college and some take even 6 or 7. </p>
<p>Do some schools have more classes a semester but less rigorous/time intensive classes? Or do some colleges just have more gen ed requirements?</p>
<p>The school where the norm is 7 a semester doesn’t have classes that are equivalent to the school where the norm is 4 classes a semester. I know they wouldn’t be doing too well if they tried to take 7 engineering classes where I go.</p>
<p>At colleges with lower course loads each course is meant to be more work-intensive. I don’t know whether that’s actually true, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to take more than 5 courses at my average-of-4-courses-per-term college, and even 4 courses is stretching it in some semesters.</p>
<p>At my school the norm is 6 a semester, 5 if you overloaded and took requirements early, 4 if you are a lazy bum. Real badasses at my school take 8 classes a semester, and the extreme ones 9. And at my school, 4 classes will put 6 to shame at any other school, easy.</p>
<p>At my alma mater, there are 5 semesters that we had to take 18 or 18.5 credits per semester in order to stay on track to graduate in 4 years. That’s pretty much the equivalent of six 3 credit courses.</p>
<p>My school caps out 16 credits(6 classes for me right now) so I think maybe some of the classes might be a lecture + lab which is about 4 credits and other may only be 2 credits which would explain why some people have more classes than others!</p>