Credits per semester

College Majors Engineering Majors
1

<p>This fall will be my first semester as a freshman mechanical engineering major at VCU and I have so far signed up for 19 credits as follows.</p>

<p>General Chem 1 (3)
General Chem 1 Lab (1)
University Physics 1 (5)
University Physics 1 Lab (0)
Calculus 2 (4)
Focused Inquiry 2 (Basically like English Composition) (3)
Intro to Engineering (3)</p>

<p>I also wanted to sign up for 3 more classes at a local community college concurrently with the classes I have listed above for 8 more credits which are all part of the ME curriculum</p>

<p>Vector Calc (4)
Electric Circuits (3)
Electric Circuits Lab (1)</p>

<p>I wanted to know how tough of a schedule this is going to be for my first semester. I understand its going to be very challenging and will require hours of study time per class, but I wanted to know to what degree preferably by someone who has already attempted a schedule like this. The reason I want to take all these classes is so that I can graduate early in 3 years saving thousands of dollars, jump into my master's program earlier, and avoid taking classes in the summer and instead do internships. During my high school years I was in the AP AND IB program so that gives me roughly an idea of the difficultly I should expect. Also, more specifically, I took about 10 classes during my senior year at high school when most everyone took only 7 and also weren't in the IB program. I had 5 IB classes, 2 honors, 1 AP online, and 3 community college classes (1 during the fall semester and 2 during the spring semester). I don't know how closely this mimics my intended schedule for next year, but I'm hoping its going to be similar.
What do you guys think? Do you think I'll be able to handle this based on what I have said in the previous paragraph or no? If so, what should I expect in terms of course load and homework. It doesn't have to be in relation to VCU, but I would like a general idea.<br>
Also, if I do decide to go with this, how can I convince my advisor and dean to let me take these extra 3 classes at the community college? Are there any specific arguments I can use?</p>

2

<p>I don’t think you will be able to get permission to take the community college courses - unless your school does not have those courses you cannot be enlisted in two schools at the same time (look up the policy just in case). Also it is your first semester so I doubt you could convince them even if it is not against policy.
Stick with your 19 credits the first semester. See how you do with that and increase in the second semester. You don’t want to take too much, screw up your semester and spend the next 3 years trying to make up for it.
Chemistry and physics together will be a lot of work (in general classes with labs are always very time consuming). If you took Calc BC in high school and did well Calc 2 should be a breeze.
Keep in mind that you want to get involved on campus - a 4.0 won’t be all impressive to employers if you did virtually nothing else.</p>

3

<p>I did take BC Calculus in high school and passed with a B so I know I will do pretty well in Calc 2. I also took IB Chem HL for 2 years so I don’t think I’ll be having any trouble in that class either. With Physics, I took honors physics in high school and then self-studied to take the AP Physics C Mechanics exam. Like with Chem and Calc 2, I’m expecting Physics to be also a review class for the most part. Finally, I also think I’m somewhat prepared to take Vector Calculus because I taught myself the basics of multi-variable calculus, such as taking dot products, cross products, partials derivatives, and a few other stuff. If it was possible, I could place out the class by taking an exam, but I still wanted to actually take the class just so I can understand the small details that I may have missed.
Instead of taking some of these classes later, I wanted to group them all together so that I can then concentrate on the harder classes later. My thinking is that by grouping all the classes I’m expecting to be easy, I can take more classes and still participate in other activities my college offers, like extracurriculars. I’m really expecting Chem, Physics, Calc 2, and vector calc to be not much trouble. What I am kinda worried about is the amount of homework typically given in a college class and if the professors really check/grade them? By the way, my school does allow student to take classes concurrently at a different college and nowhere could I find saying that freshman cannot also take part in this. Even on the form that VCU makes you fill out, it does not ask for a reason or anything, but I’m assuming my advisor or the dean will probably ask.
Given this new information about me, what do you think? Do you still think I should not do this though I’m expecting the majority of my classes to be relatively simple material-wise? Please correct me if I’m mistaken or make incorrect assumptions.</p>

4

<p>Sorry, but I think that’s a really bad idea for a number of reasons.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>You are making a lot of bold assumptions. I’m not saying you’re wrong, but there’s just no way to know whether this will work as you plan. The worst case scenario - failing courses and screwing up your GPA / course sequence - is pretty bad. In my experience, technical college courses are much more difficult than their high school counterparts. Multivariable was a very tough class for me, and I definitely wouldn’t consider a B in your AP course sufficient preparation.</p></li>
<li><p>The homework load might be a problem, but you should worry about exams. Exams will dictate your performance in these courses. What will you do if you have four exams in the same week? What if one of the CC exams conflicts with your university? A single bad score could seriously impact your grade.</p></li>
<li><p>Some of these may be curved, weed-out courses. Your classmates will have more time to study and be less stressed.</p></li>
<li><p>Freshman year is stressful. You will be adapting to college life, making new friends, and generally adjusting to adulthood. This is not the time to overload.</p></li>
<li><p>Why didn’t you take the AP exams for these courses and place out if you are in such a hurry?</p></li>
<li><p>Engineering curricula are structured. The people you meet in these classes may be in your future courses as well. Why are you so eager to accelerate through instead of staying in sequence with your peers?</p></li>
</ol>

5

<p>@noimagination:</p>

<p>1) I understand your point here and I completely agree with you, but do you think its a risk I should take based on my response to your other points?</p>

<p>2) I talked with my potential professors and requested a syllabus from each of them that they used in previous semesters just to get an idea on the amount of homework I’ll be facing. Almost all them will be collecting homework once a week, which gives me a full week to complete each assignment, and they would be grading them as only 5-10% of my final grade. Please correct me if I’m mistaken here, but that seems to be overall less than what I got in high school. And like I mentioned in my previous post, most of my classes are mainly those which I already took in high school so I’m kinda expecting them to be almost like a review except for some new stuff here and there. But again, I seem to be making a bold assumption like you mentioned in your first point.
Also, I’m trying to familiarize myself this summer with some of the courses that I know for sure I’ll be taking so that if I do decide to take all those courses, I wouldn’t be too hard-pressed when it comes down to plain old studying/cramming since I already had exposure to it before. Like a lot of people, I tend to learn and something something a whole better if I had already seen it before.
As far as final exams go, I already looked at the schedule and I do not have any conflicts. Also I sufficient time to travel from my college to CC during exam week. </p>

<p>3) I don’t understand what you mean by “curved, weed-out courses”. If you could explain that just a little bit, that would be helpful.</p>

<p>4) I really like this point. Very valid. But of course, everything has its advantages and disadvantages.</p>

<p>5) My school did not offer as many AP classes as other schools. The only AP exam I was able to take was AP Calculus BC but that was only as an online class. I was only allowed to pick 1 online class. </p>

<p>6) As I mentioned in my first post, I want to accelerate because of the following reasons:
-To save thousands of dollars of college tuition
-To get a jump start on my master’s program
-To avoid taking classes during the summer so that I can concentrate on doing internships and possibly other engineering-related activities so that I can gain experience and improve my resume for future careers while graduating early at the same time.</p>

<p>Thank you for responses. They are extremely helpful.</p>

6

<p>This is one of the important differences between college and high school. In many high school courses, homework scores can boost your grade substantially as a reward for effort. In college, exams will probably dictate your grade (at least in these intro courses). Your TAs will not work very hard grading your homework; it is designed to help you learn, not assess your skills.</p>

<p>You might find [this</a> comparison](<a href=“http://smu.edu/alec/transition.asp]this”>http://smu.edu/alec/transition.asp) helpful.</p>

<p>Curved classes have preset gradelines such that the top x% of the course will receive A’s, the next y% B’s, and so on. This practice is common in freshman math/science courses and serves to weed out the weakest students in the class, who are stuck at the bottom of the curve with poor scores. The more general point here is that a course might be difficult not just because of the material but also because of how it is graded. I don’t know which courses at your university are hardest.</p>

<p>It’s hard for me to give you a good answer because I just don’t know what these specific courses will require. Maybe your honors physics class was really good and you’re ready for circuits. Likewise, I don’t know enough about your financial situation to say whether saving a year’s tuition is worth the sacrifice. Maybe some other users can give you feedback on the idea of graduating in three years.</p>

7

<p>I would surely not go through with your plans. I came from a good high school and went through a lot of AP courses there, so I can give you a decent perspective. </p>

<p>College science, math and engineering classes are definitely more work than an AP course. I admit, you did a lot of work your senior year but you can’t expect it to be the same level of difficulty in college, even if you feel you know a lot of the material. For some of the classes, you might know a decent amount of the material but you can’t expect to know it all. I found that the AP courses don’t go into as much detail as college courses and so you will still learn a bit more than you might have known already. Of course this doesn’t mean the material will be hard but you can never know until you go through it. </p>

<p>As one mentioned, having good grades and all that isn’t all you want to aim for during college. You want to hang out with people so you don’t lose your sanity. You want to apply your knowledge or exercise leadership skills in clubs. You want to get to know professors. You want to learn more than the typical requirements for a degree to stand out when you do go to try and get a job or go to grad school, maybe even do research during the semester. </p>

<p>The goal should be to do well academically, apply your knowledge as much as possible and enjoy the college experience. Don’t burn yourself out because you never know if it will even be worth it. Do the first semester with a typical credits amount and see how it is. If you think you can do more the following semesters, go for it, but keep in mind things definitely get harder once you hit the junior/senior year courses, so things will get tough. Then figure out what aspects you are specifically interested in and take extra courses more dedicated towards then. It will help you verify when trying to get a job or into grad school that you know enough to work/do research in that area better than another person. This will be more worth it than saving a year, if you can afford to go the four years.</p>

<p>By the way, this is advice from a kid going to UIUC who thought to try and graduate in 3 years too, so I know to an extent how your thinking is. I just don’t believe graduating in 3 years is as worth it as taking more courses and furthering your education more than other engineers in your graduating class.</p>

<p>Anyways, best of luck to you!</p>

8

<p>As someone who is actually on track to finish in 3 years(with a standard 15-credit per semester schedule), I’m going to tell you right now that if you attempt this, you are going to crash and burn. I don’t say this as I general rule, I say this about you specifically. Don’t take anything I say personally; if I’m blunt, that’s because sugar-coating the truth does you no favors.</p>

<p>Before I explain why I don’t think you’ll make it, I’ll start with your reasons.
Tuition. I do understand how this may be important, especially since you want a Masters. But getting your tuition paid for is simply a matter of finding scholarships and balancing your budget in a very responsible way. You can also find work to help pay for the costs. I currently make $4k/year in excess of my tuition/fees in scholarship money alone. If you’re actually a good student, the money is around. You just have to look for it and spend responsibly.
You’re not going to be better off in a Masters program if you rush your undergrad. Masters courses are nothing like high school or an undergrad. They are all about your major and require an in-depth knowledge of all the prerequisites. If you rush your undergrad, you will either flunk out of your Masters program or get close enough to it that your degree becomes meaningless (who wants to take someone for an extremely complex job that requires an advanced degree if they’re not competent enough to keep up with work like that?).
Opening your summers is your last reason. Summers are important, but you’re forgetting that so are school years. You should find a good lab and get started when you can. Don’t bother taking more classes than a standard workload; just take the four years.</p>

<p>Now, I’ll get to why I don’t think you can do it.</p>

<p>Graduating in three years in engineering is the hardest of all potential early graduations. For one, it’s impossible to do in any less than three years. The workload is also much greater. I know plenty of talented people who graduated with highest honors in three years from science programs, and they agree that the workload there is nothing in comparison. To graduate early, you really do have to be one of the best students the university has ever seen from the very start.</p>

<p>Everyone in here who talks about adjusting to college life makes an extremely valid point. High school and college are nothing alike, and if you’re going for 3 years, you really have to be worlds ahead of your fellow incoming freshmen in maturity. Given that you’re clueless about the workload in a university, I can already tell that this is not you. Most are. But most don’t finish in 3 years either.</p>

<p>Also, your freshmen year will feature the weed-out classes, usually the calculus series (3 classes, last one in your soph year) and physics for majors (2 classes). If you’re curious what these are, they’re generally core classes required by your major that demand significantly more of you than they honestly need to do to master the material in order to get rid of those that aren’t capable or committed to rising to the challenge. Really, it’s a form of mercy killing; they tell you nicely in your first year that you’re not cut out to be an engineer before classes like Physical Chemistry, Differential Equations tell you what’s up. Or worse, if your university coddles you through it, the most painful and costly lesson you could learn would be from the real world. Before these more difficult challenges murder you ten times over, the university gives you a simple chance to get out if you’re not really up to it and you’re just fooling yourself.
What does this mean? It means that right from the start, you’re going to be saddled with hours and hours of work. More, you really should play the game the university expects you to play because unless you really, truly know better (YOU don’t), you should trust the academic expertise of those that made the curriculum. They have graduate degrees and decades of experience; you don’t. AP, IB, and even community college classes are no indication of how you’ll do in university; many AP/IBs end up as C students because they fail to adjust properly.</p>

<p>3 years requires an immense work ethic and also a lot of natural talent, especially in math. You have to be on top of your work and pretty much do it as it is assigned, even if that’s 2+ weeks in advance. You also have to be really, really on top of math work. You have to understand derivatives, integrals, sigma notation, and even Taylor series of a formula and what is means in more simple terms in a matter of seconds. The thing about three years is that you can never afford to fall behind, even for a moment; not just in your classes, but also in everything else as well. When you get to differential equations (a very, very difficult math class to do exceptionally well in), for example, your resolve will be tested, and it’s extremely easy to falter. You will falter sooner or later, I assure you. There’s plenty of help for you, so don’t really worry. It’s just that 3 years is not possible if this is the case.
Even if you are talented, there is a lot of work that’s a grind. Genius or not, 30+ complex problem sets a week take a long time. It gets hard sometimes, and your work ethic also cannot falter even for a moment, no matter how BS the situation may get.</p>

<p>Transfer credits. If you don’t have over a year’s worth of credits for your major, you’re not graduating early no matter how good you are. Sorry, but it’s just simply not happening. </p>

<p>So to summarize, if you’re not one of the most talented, hard-working, prepared, and mature students the university has ever seen, don’t even bother trying to finish engineering in 3. I can already see that you aren’t. Go for four. You don’t know better than the university that tells you that you need to spend four years on it.</p>

9

<p>@NeoDymium
Thanks for the extremely detailed and convincing post. I have decided to stick to the standard amount of credits this semester.</p>