<p>I've heard people say that it's best to take it easy the first sem, with 13-14 credits of courses. Is this applicable/feasible if I don't have any cc/uni/AP credits and will have to take the full 120 credits of work in 4 years?</p>
<p>With no credit coming in, you need to average 15 units per semester in order to graduate in 8 semesters. So if you take only 13 units the first semester, you need to take 2 “extra” units of courses in later semesters.</p>
<p>A typical normal course load is 4 regular courses (most are 4 units each; a few are 3 units each). Often, courses with labs, art studio, music performance, term projects, and computer programming assignments are significantly more work per unit than other courses, so be careful about putting too many such courses together in one semester.</p>
<p>If you need to earn more credits, you can take up to 16 units of DeCal classes, and a few seminars here and there.</p>