Hi, I am currently enrolled in a community college after transferring from a four year college due to personal reasons. I am enrolled in four classes, totaling 14 credits. I am taking Anatomy and Physiology (4), Statistics (4), Lifespan Psychology (3), and a History Class (3). My mom seems to think that my schedule is weak, and I should be taking five classes, but I am worried about being overloaded, especially with Anatomy. I am looking to transfer to another four year university next fall. Am I taking enough classes, or should I consider picking up a fifth? Thank you.
Note: I moved your question to “College Life.”
It’s not so much about the number of classes as your mom suggests, but rather the number of credits and the difficulty of those classes. I’ve seen college students take anywhere from 3 to 6 classes per semester, depending on the credit load, the individual needs/desires of the student, and what else the student had going on that semester.
In any case, four classes is plenty, particularly when you have two 4-credit classes. A&P often requires a lot of memorization and it might be good to take a comparatively lighter course load, so to speak. But you should know that the average course load at schools where most classes are 3 credits is about 15 credits, and you are very close to that. Moreover, a fifth class would put you at 17 credits, which is pretty close to overload levels at many colleges.
Short version: you’re just fine.
@juillet hi, thank you for the speedy response, I appreciate it. I agree as well, I think I will be very busy, my mom just thinks I’m going to have so much free time because I have one class on MWF, and three classes TR. I am possibly looking to start a job and/or a volunteer position, so I won’t have a ton of free te! Anyways, thank you!!
Colleges using the semester credit hour system typically require 120 to 128 credits to graduate with a bachelor’s degree. This means that an average of 15 or 16 credits per semester is needed to complete that number of credits in eight semesters.
For financial aid purposes, usually 12 credits per semester is considered “full time”, but that will result in needing 10 or 11 semesters to graduate if one does that every semester.
Nominally, the total workload is 3 hours per week per credit hour (including both in-class and out-of-class work), so 15 or 16 credits supposedly takes 45 to 48 hours per week.
I think 14 credits is fine. You could always pick up a summer course or two before transferring to a 4-year school if you want to cut down on the time you spend at the 4-year college.
Usually when people say that 4 classes is a “light” schedule, they mean 4 3-credit courses which total 12 credit hours - the reason that’s considered light is because 12 credits a semester would entail an extra year of study to completely a traditional 120 credit degree. With that said, two 4 credit courses sound rather time consuming - the only classes at my school that are 4 credits are usually far more time intensive and challenging than their 3 credit counterparts - like upper division math (Calculus 3 and beyond) plus hard sciences/engineering courses, so your schedule sounds rather demanding as is. 14 credits only puts you a single credit hour beneath the standard 15 credit recommendation which won’t be terribly difficult to compensate for later on. All you’d have to do is taking a 16 credit course load one semester somewhere down the road.
It’s hard to say what you could potentially handle. Based on your schedule, I’d say sticking with your current schedule looks reasonable, but adding another class also looks reasonable. An “average” course load is either 15 or 16 credits and yours is 14, so it’s lighter than that average but adding another class would make it heavier than that average.
Your schedule seems fine. Anatomy is really difficult (I took a 4 credit anatomy and phys class last semester) so you’ll want the extra time to study. Good luck!