<p>If you go through school for the grades, that you’re perogative. I prefer not to spend my life waiting for something. Working through high school for college, working through college for grad school, working through grad school to get my PhD, finishing my PhD to get a six figure job, working my whole life so I can retire… etc. Life is short, and I prefer to make the most of it. Then again, I think learning is worthwhile - worth a lot more than a six figure salary.</p>
<p>Again, that’s fine, but you could have saved yourself a lot of money and effort by just going to a decent in-state public school if you’re only goal in life is to get the grade so you can become a corporate lawyer. It’s not worth spending all that time and money at NYU since you don’t value your undergrad experience, you could just be at Joe Schmo University and get a good LSAT score and grades. </p>
<p>But we digress from the main topic which is homework loads in college.</p>
<p>Homework loads are how you manage them. You can go a month without studying if you do it right. Or you can spend 14 hours a day in the library. Cramming for a week right before the exam works better for me so that’s the way I do it (outside of regular homework assignments).</p>
<p>At the end of the day you could end up with the same grade. Of course I care about things like efficiency, being an econ major, so I try to minimize studying and maximize my grades.</p>
<p>Be careful with cramming though. I know some students who honestly do get better grades if they cram a week before the test. But I also know some students who consistently get Cs doing that, because immediately after each midterm they forget everything they learned. And I know many people in that second group.</p>
<p>I’ll stop waiting for something (a cushy job and a fat paycheck) when I obtain it. Money and wealth doesn’t buy happiness but it sure as hell helps.</p>
<p>I’m a history major in college right now (and was doubling in PoliSci until this semester).</p>
<p>I find that most of my classes in history are based on both papers and exams (but more so on papers because of the critical thinking skills it provides).<br>
I am taking 2 history classes this semester, and each usually has 50-60 pages of reading a night. I usually read it carefully, because I know the professors well and really enjoy the material. </p>
<p>For my non-history classes, there’s more of a focus on exams as opposed to essays, and I usually care a lot less about the readings.</p>
<p>Most of my homework in general is reading, although there will sometimes be short papers or reflection pieces. As someone who loves writing, it doesn’t bother me much.</p>
<p>Many/most upper division courses in the social sciences assign a major paper. </p>
<p>During fall quarter, I had virtually no homework that had to be turned in. The occasional (very short) calculus problem set and that was it. Winter quarter was quite a bit worse with 5ish hours of english homework a week and much longer math problem sets that were graded for correctness this time. </p>
<p>As for the amount of out-of-class time you have to dedicate to each class that varies a lot by class. For social science classes, I tend to get high As with 30 hours/quarter (a little less than 3 hours/wk). On the other side of the spectrum, I’ve only gotten low Bs in my math classes while dedicating 10 hours/wk. So it really varies quite a bit depending on your strengths and the difficulty of the subject. If you have a really good system for classes that test understanding and knowing (e.g. qualitative social science courses) then studying for those courses is going to be really easy. On the other hand, courses that test a skill (e.g. accounting, math, foreign language) require completely different study skills and are usually much more difficult.</p>
<p>It completely depends on the professor. Some professors have lots of homework, some literally have none. And even with the ones who assign homework, some of them don’t do much but check off that the assignment was done.</p>