<p>How many courses do people generally take in a semester? How much is too much?</p>
<p>I’ve seen people take 3 classes and people with 6 classes. Honestly it depends on your own time management and stress levels. Also optionally activities like having a job, student organizations, volunteering, etc. </p>
<p>Depends on the number of credits at your school and whether you are on semesters or trimesters or quarters.</p>
<p>For semesters, 5 3-credit classes (15 credits) will get you graduated in 4 years.
For semesters, 4 4-credit classes (16 credits) seems to be the norm.</p>
<p>You can do more up to a point (there will be limitations imposed by the school for GPA and possibly extra cost) and less up to a point (if you drop too low, you will lose full-time student status and possibly financial aid and eligibility for campus housing.).</p>
<p>Sometimes advisors suggest taking fewer credits your first semester in order to ease the transition into college, which can be helpful, but you need to recognize that you then are behind the curve and will need to either overload credits in the future or take summer/winter classes if you want to graduate on time.</p>
<p>For trimesters or quarters, I’ll defer to others who are more familiar with that system.</p>
<p>It’s important to realize that classes aren’t always equivalent. Something like introductory sociology or an introductory American government class isn’t comparable in time or difficulty to Calc III, organic chemistry, or calculus based physics. At my school, for instance, that sociology or government class would be 3 credit hours, while organic chemistry and physics are each 5 credit hours. </p>
<p>My last two semesters were 5 classes each, with 21 total credit hours, but two of the classes had labs, so it was more like 7 classes realistically. I was in sequenced courses through the last two semesters; university physics, calculus, general chemistry, anthropology, and Spanish, with labs for both physics and chemistry.</p>
<p>That’s a heavier course load than most people will typically take. On average, 15-16 credits per semester, or 4-5 classes per semester would be the typical college course load. Overloading yourself isn’t a good thing if you aren’t confident that you can handle it. </p>