<p>From the discussion on this forum, you guys seem to be able to gauge the difficulty of a course load from the amount of credit hours one is taking.</p>
<p>Is this credit hour thing consistent within the US? Can someone explain it to me?</p>
<p>It usually a good gauge, but not perfect by any means. I’ve had classes that were 5 credit hours where I did literally nothing the entire quarter and 3 credit classes where I did ~15+ hours of work a week, it all depends on the class.</p>
<p>In reality, credit hours just comes down to the amount of time that is spent in class per week. 50 minutes = 1 hour. If the class meets for 3 days, 50 minutes each time, then its a 3 credit hour class.</p>
<p>4 credit hour classes often meet 3 times a week for 1:15 minutes, or 4 times per week for 50 minutes, for 3 times per week for 50 minutes combined with a lab (1 credit hour, even though they are usually longer in actual time).</p>
<p>It really doesn’t mean the classes are more difficult, it just means you have longer classes. Typically more credit hours means more topics are coverage, but that’s not always the case. I’ve had 3 credit hour classes where the workload was very heavy and the concepts were extremely difficult.</p>
<p>I personally don’t think credit hours have anything to do with the difficulty or the amount of time required to be in class or working/studying for the class.</p>
<p>I’ve had 3 credit classes be more class and more work than 4 credit classes. I’ve had 4 credit classes that were jokes. I’ve had 4 credit classes that had 20 hours worth of homework a week on top of lab, lecture, exams, and quizzes (and other classes).</p>
<p>In a school where one takes 15 credits per semester or quarter (thus 120 semester credits or 180 quarter credits to graduate), one would nominally spend 3 hours per week per credit (so 45 hours per week for 15 credits) in and out of class. Of course, reality is often a lot less than that, though some courses (usually those with labs, large projects, or lots of computer programming) involve a lot more time per credit than others.</p>