<p>I'm an incoming freshman, and I'm debating whether to take 15 or 18 units my first semester. 18 seems like way too many, but at least 9 or 10 of those units are from introductory classes. Otherwise I'm basically just taking chemistry and honors english... Any feedback would be great. I think I'm just being thrown off because all of the other honors kids around me are in 17+ units. I'll probably go for the 15 because that's average, I think I just need reassurance.</p>
<p>Take 15. Enjoy your first semester. Study and get a great GPA your freshmen year as your base. College will get harder and you want to start off right. Trust me.</p>
<p>I always preferred fewer credits as an undergraduate. (I even went down to 12 credits my junior and senior years and made up the difference with AP credits.) That allowed me to get more out of the classes I did take, take full advantage of the opportunities around me and still have room to breath. I fared quite well with that approach. I’m now a grad student at Stanford while my classmates who insisted on taking a course overload every term are at lower-ranked graduate programs. I simply had more time to impress my professors! :)</p>
<p>You probably want to find out if the specific courses at your specific college are known to be high or low workload courses for their credit unit value. Nominally, each credit unit is supposed to mean 3 hours of work (including both in and out of class work) per week, but the actual average workload is significantly less (probably closer to 2 hours of work per week). But some courses, particularly those with labs, computer programming, or large term projects, tend to be higher workload than others of the same credit unit value at the same college.</p>
<p>Take a lower amount and get used to college. If you have to, overload later, when you’re used to the workload.</p>
<p>Some students sign up for an overload schedule but are willing to drop a course before the drop deadline if the workload is too high.</p>
<p>I.e. you may find that your friends with 17+ credit unit schedules now will have 14-16 credit unit schedule at the drop deadline.</p>