<p>I'm presuming that among all you participating on this forum there might be some of you who've taken on more than 20 units during a single quarter. If you are a student who has done this:</p>
<ol>
<li>How many units was it, and is this number the most you've taken during a single quarter, of all your UCSD quarters completed?</li>
<li>What's the maximum # of units another student has taken during a quarter? Hearsay is acceptable.</li>
<li>What is the maximum # any UCSD student is allowed to take: A. without needing special administrative permission, and B. with administrative permission granted?</li>
</ol>
<p>1) 21 units
2) I know someone who took 30 units once. She was crazy smart/hardworking.
3) You can take as many as you want so long as your department and college advisor approve of it. They look at your GPA to see if you can handle such a load.</p>
<ol>
<li>31 (5 4-unit undergrad courses, 1 6-unit undergrad course, 1 2-unit 199, 1 3-unit doctoral seminar) spring quarter my third year. Typically took between 20-24 units/quarter, though.</li>
<li>Pretty famous kid who graduated from UCSD in 2008 (was actually at UCSD for a year as a physicist before formally going to Princeton for his Ph.D.) was taking around 30-40 units/quarter regularly, and these were all courses in the Physics and Math departments. I did take a few math uppers with him and he blew just about all of us out of the water. In 2 years, he actually completed every undergraduate Physics class with a 4.0 (most were actually A+s, too). He was also heavily involved in theoretical physics research with Jorge Hirsch.
3A. 22
3B. Don’t think there’s a limit as long as you can demonstrate the ability to complete all coursework in a satisfactory manner.</li>
</ol>
<p>People have different thresholds for what they can handle. Some people can only take 12 units/quarter whereas others feel like they’re not doing anything unless they take 20. I know that during this last round of Ph.D. applications, professors/adcomms really noticed my workloads each quarter (including research assistantships, work, and grad courses) and it helped differentiate me from the other 200 applicants vying for 4 spots in my doctoral program.</p>
<p>If you can handle it, I say shoot for the maximum you can handle. If you really want to set yourself up for success post-undergrad, you shouldn’t take the easy route – of course, this isn’t to say that you should give up your sanity, social life, and happiness (I was quite happy during undergrad and had lots of amazing and supportive friends): what worked for me may not necessarily work for you or anybody else.</p>
<p>Thanks for that mildly condescending advice. Just because someone is taking 18 instead of 20 units per quarter does not mean they’re taking the “easy route” and are being set up for failure post-undergrad.</p>
<p>My post wasn’t intended to be condescending. You’re giving advice to never take 20 units to someone who has never tried it. If I took your advice starting my second year, I doubt I’d be where I’m at today. I wanted to provide the vignette that if you’re unsure of whether or not you can handle a difficult workload, try it – never pushing yourself to even challenge yourself is the easy way out. If you try it and have to drop a few classes, so be it. My first year, I was taking 12-16 units because that’s what I could handle back then, but I never became complacent with that.</p>
<p>College is definitely what you make of it, but I feel you’re cheating yourself out if you’re at a constant ‘comfortable’ state. Whether or not the economy is in shambles, you’re always going to have competition around you for the jobs that everyone wants. If you’re some savant genius with all the natural ability in the world, hard work may not be necessary; but for all the rest of us mortals, you can’t just stand idly by during the prime 4-5 years of your life getting outworked by your peers. When I see friends and classmates from my Econ classes say that they can’t find work and blame it on the economy, I can’t help but scoff because those are typically the people who were content with just skating by their bachelor’s degree. I have other friends who graduated with a Communications degree working on Capitol Hill, or a Management Science friend who’s working as an investment banker – they just outworked their competition by always looking for internships, taking as many relevant courses as they could in undergrad, and impressing people that have networking abilities.</p>
<p>And I never mentioned anything about ‘failure’ if you don’t push yourself – that’s you putting words in my mouth. There’s plenty of people graduating from UCSD with great prospects, but the ones going on to Med/Law/Business/Graduate school, or getting top internships and externships, and job offers are people who worked hard. Sure, some work harder than others, but I’m sure if you plotted out a theoretical correlation between effort and success, you’d find a strong positive relationship. And once again, there ARE exceptions to this and I know plenty of people with high-paying jobs with little/no work experience and not the greatest academic record, but they’re the exception, not the norm; most of my friends that fit that profile are still unemployed.</p>
<p>Great posts guys…wow @ that one famous physics graduate (and also at Oyama for even 31 units, that’s quite an endeavor!) </p>
<p>Next question: What is the tuition cost per unit if one exceeds 22 units in a quarter? Is there an extra cost, or is it the same cost as standard tuition–a flat rate for any number of units 4-20?</p>
<p>Yup – during the Fall - Spring, it’s a flat rate for full-time students, which was an incentive for me since I didn’t want to pay at a per-unit rate for summer sessions.</p>
<p>I took 21 my first quarter here, and I have to say that it’s much easier if you are interested in the subject matter of the extra classes you’re taking. The classes I took didn’t count for my major, minor or GE, but I just took it because it seemed like a cool thing to know. If you’re wondering, I took a Freshman Seminar on How To Create Your Own Language, and Financial Accounting(Econ 4).</p>
<p>This is off topic, but kewlosaurusrex, what did you learn in the How to Create Your Own Language course? I just got accepted to UCSD and I might want to take a fun class first semester if I decide to go there.</p>
<p>The funny thing about that is that I did my worst freshman year when I was taking 12 units/quarter. I think too much idle time made it difficult to ever buckle down to start working.</p>
<p>@biologeek: We learnt how Volapuk, Esperanto, Navvi(the language from Avatar), Klingon etc were constructed and how you can break them down into specific groups and pretty much derive a formula for how to create a word in that language. We also learnt a bit about pronunciation of different syllables; I can an impeccable Indian accent now xD </p>
<p>@Oyama: I agree with you on that. Sometimes it’s really hard to get anything done if you feel like you have all weekend to do it like at the beginning of every quarter… heh</p>