<p>I would like to know about the difficulty of a course-load exceeding fifteen credits, in particular for my first two years at the UW. Primarily the courses will be comprised of a Chinese heritage language course and, depending on the year, either a Honors General Chemistry course or a Honors Organic Chemistry course (plus laboratory for the Winter and Spring quarters). The other course will either be a humanities course which fulfills part of the Chinese major requirements in perhaps the history or international affairs departments or some scientific course such as Physical Chemistry for Biochemists or the first two courses of the introductory Biology sequence, that is, BIOL 180 and BIOL 200.</p>
<p>For comparison purposes, I am currently easily handling this schedule at a local high school, Newport HS:</p>
<p>AP Computer Science
Adv. Calculus
AP Economics
AP Eng. Language
AP French Language
AP Biology
AP US History</p>
<p>Suppose I take a seventeen-credit quarter course-load. What will the time requirements and workload of that be in comparison to my current high school schedule? I am aware that exact quantifications and comparisons are obviously impossible, but I would certainly appreciate your thoughts in the matter.</p>
<p>At the UW, I will probably not have much of a chance to perform very much undergraduate research in my first two years, so I doubt time spent in extracurriculars will be too much of a problem. I do not play a sport. Thus I will be able to devote most of my time to schoolwork.</p>
<p>Thank you for your consideration in this matter.</p>
<p>I know you’re most likely going to hate this answer… but here goes.
Try out your first quarter here, and see how it goes. Judge from there. I know you want to plan out everything and every class, trust me, I’m that kind of person too. However, it most likely won’t work that way. You will come here, your ideas will change, you will talk to peers and advisors and discover different things. You will find out about general requirements. You’ll try to get into a class, and it will be closed.</p>
<p>This is just an honest answer. Of course, I don’t know you. Your major might not change, you might get into every class, and you might know your stuff perfectly. But, realistically, that won’t happen.</p>
<p>BUT, I will tell you that I have lots of friends who took 17 credits, it’s not all that bad, depending on the classes.
Any idea of which classes, in particular, you want for fall quarter freshman year?</p>
<p>As specified in my other thread, I would like to take CHEM 145, BIOL 180, and CHIN 111 for my first quarter at the UW. I will also take HONORS 100 if I decide to apply for the UW Honors program and I am accepted, or perhaps MATH 308 if I do not elect to take the Bellevue College course equivalent through Running Start and transfer the credits to the UW.</p>
<p>you sound like you can handle it. i took 18 credits this quarter (2 languages, one of them non-heritage chinese), no difficult classes per se, and scored a decent gpa. and that’s with my mind wandering pretty much everywhere but class and schoolwork for a good 5 weeks or so. if you use your time well, you should be fine.</p>
<p>Honestly, you sound like a very capable student who can handle this work load. Also, Honors 100 kind of became a ‘study hall’ for me… I was doing math review pretty much every week during that time.</p>
<p>I’m sure some advisors would tell you to take an easier load, because they want students to not get frustrated first quarter. If you stay focused, and not skip class (you don’t seem like the person to do this…) you’ll be fine. Don’t get overconfident because of your high school track record. </p>
<p>If it proves to be too hard for you, just adjust it for winter quarter.</p>
<p>to get my AA i did 20 credits per quarter for 4 out of 5 quarters and ended up with a 3.93 GPA. So, it wasn’t an issue with me. However, I’m a very focused and organized person so that helps</p>
<p>Do you think I should do the General Honors program or if I should simply plan on completing Departmental Honors? I am not sure, but General Honors seems like a lot of irritating work.</p>
<p>Also, is it difficult to maintain a cumulative GPA over 3.9 at the UW? I would like to graduate magna cum laude if possible. I have nothing to do except from study, so I will be able to devote enormous amounts of time at home to studying and to class preparation. If I study at least eight hours a day assuming a fairly rigorous courseload of 16-18 credits, will I be able to get a grade of 4.0 in some of them? I do not believe I will be able to allocate much more than eight hours a day for intensive study if I am to maintain a proper sleep schedule and have adequate time for eating, especially given the time required for classes and commuting. Of course, I can simply sleep less than eight hours a day, but I believe eight hours is the recommended amount and I would like to adhere to my current sleep pattern if at all possible.</p>
<p>I realize that it is far more difficult to achieve a high GPA in college than in high school but I would still like to do so regardless in order to graduate with academic honors. Again, I will be easily able to allocate eight hours a day for academic study. Is this enough, assuming productive work is done in those eight hours, to help me maintain a GPA of at LEAST 3.8? Should I plan on beginning independent study of course material before I enter the UW? (I begun studying some chemistry–I purchased a textbook a few weeks ago.)</p>
<p>it’s “work hard, play hard” not “work hard, play hard later” for a reason. You need to have some free time during the quarter as well. </p>
<p>For example, a former boss of mine was the hardest worker ever…and quickly moved up the corporate ladder. But at night he was able to go out drinking most nights a week. He was able to do both at once. </p>
<p>Also, who you plan to be in a year or two will most likely be quite different then who you actually are when the time comes. These are your growing years, kiddo</p>
<p>how are you planning on meeting ppl and making friends if all you do is attend class, study, and sleep every day? of course hard work is necessary, but you could also have a bit of fun during the week without it affecting your grade… so break the norm sometimes! you’re in college.</p>
<p>With the way you express yourself online and your own description of your habits, I can safely say that you will have no problem with class at UW. The honors program is up to the individual; it’s really just a different core set of classes that might be slightly more difficult, but in the end, it doesn’t really matter if you do honors or not. Departmental honors are much more impressive than college honors, so if you do want honors, go for those. A lot of people will tell you that regular honors isn’t worth it, and if you’re worried about keeping a high GPA, you probably don’t need to do it.</p>
<p>As for the number of credits you take, it doesn’t really matter how many credits you take, only the combination of classes. You would have a much harder time with 12 credits of all hard science classes than 17 credits of elective/general ed requirements. It’s recommended that you don’t take more than 3 “science” classes in one quarter (math/chem/bio/physics/etc) because most people can’t handle it. You probably can based on what you said about yourself, but realize it will be very rigorous and you might not have much time to do anything else if you want to stay on top of the game. Having 18 credits of balanced science/humanities classes is very doable for a hard-working student though.</p>
<p>I also agree with the above posters. College is a place to make friends and learn about yourself, and you don’t seem to be allowing yourself much time for that. Especially since you won’t be living on campus, I don’t think you’ll have a fulfilling social life if your one and only activity is studying. You may be overworking yourself. Live a little.</p>
<p>You should be fine, but just to warn you, the Organic Chemistry and Biology introductory series is very difficult at UW (major weed-out classes). Sometimes, its not a matter of difficulty, but rather time management. Remember that courses that require a lot of book reading and lab work takes up a lot of time, so even if you are a very capable student (which you seem to be!) it can be rather challenging maintaining that course load.</p>
<p>If you’re 100% serious about allocated that much time to studying then you will have no problem 4.0ing the classes you mentioned. My roommate spends far less time studying (and far more time drinking) and has 4.0ed every PreMed prereq he has encountered. While I am impressed with your academic rigor, you also need to consider doing something (such as research) outside of class if you really have that much time to spend. Chem 145 and Bio 180 are not THAT difficult if you’re willing to put in the effort to do well in them.</p>