<p>Except 1st semester, student can take more than 4 courses, if they want.</p>
<p>It depends on courses or concentration, but is it manageable
or almost suicidal to take 5 courses excluding seminar during 4 yrs,
especially for science concentration ? </p>
<p>In case if she/he wants more secondary fields.</p>
<p>My Harvard interviewer said he tried this one semester, with an extra computer class. It didn’t go very well, and he suggested that people who want to do it take it Pass/Fail.</p>
<p>I did this for 3 semesters while I was there (all for a grade); I passed my classes in 2 of them with flying colors and one with rather disastrous results. My advice? It’s fine, but make sure you pick your classes wisely. If you’re taking 2-3 upper-level math or econ (or any other mathy/exam heavy) courses, it’s not wise at all to take more than 4 courses. On the other hand, if you are taking mostly paper-based seminars where it’s heavy reading with 1-2 bigger papers, 5 courses is entirely manageable. As always, you’ll have an adviser + a house full of tutors to help you out in making these decisions.</p>
<p>Regarding secondary fields, you can only declare one secondary field. You can still do a joint concentration + a secondary field though, but that’s quite a mountain of a task esp if your joint fields are not closely related.</p>