<p>hey guys, I'm gonna be a freshman this fall and so far I have 14 credit hours, but I'm not sure if that's good enough.
At my orientation, we sat down for about an hour and a half and worked on our schedules, and this one adviser told me that I should shoot for 16-17 credit hours.</p>
<p>Here are the classes that I'm going to take just fyi:
Chemistry lecture & lab (4hrs total)
Intro to engineering (1hr)
Intro to computing environments (1hr)
English (4hrs)
Calc 3 (4hrs)</p>
<p>I saw online that more than 15credit hours is too much for freshman fall, but I also heard that I should put at least 3 hours into each credit hour so I need to study at least 45 hours a week.</p>
<p>I don't really want to exhaust myself the first semester in college (plus I need to work to pay for stuff) but I also don't want to take more classes than I can handle the 2nd semester because I need more credit hours, you know?</p>
<p>What do you guys think? some feedback would be nice. thanks!</p>
<p>Depends on the school, major, and you. Nobody can make this decision for you because it is completely up to you.</p>
<p>As long as you have all of your degree requirements completed by graduation and have enough credits to graduate, it’s completely up to you on how to get them.</p>
<p>A typical freshman schedule should be 16 credits if you want to graduate on time. Here, you only have three “solid” classes, you should take an extra one for 3 credits - probably a gen ed. Check out your gen ed requirements. In particular, if you have a language requirement, you should get it done right away while it’s still “fresh” from high school. The longer you wait the more difficult it becomes (and the more difficult your other classes become, which makes things sticky).</p>
<p>It really all depends. Some classes will take more time than others. Some classes may just be a midterm and final, while other classes will be writing intensive. </p>
<p>It all depends on the classes, and how much you apply yourself to them. </p>
<p>The 3 hours of study time per credit hour is a good recommendation, but in many classes it’s not really necessary. English, for instance, is typically a class that requires very little study time in my experience. Aside from the time spent actually writing papers, there’s very little to really study for. </p>
<p>The intro to computing environments and intro to engineering courses are likely going to require very little study time. Since they’re 1 credit hour each, I’m guessing they’re more like general surveys of “this is what you can do in this field.” </p>
<p>Within that schedule, most of your study time would likely be devoted to calc and chem. The other courses aren’t likely to involve a whole lot in the way of “studying.”</p>
<p>thanks all.
I don’t need to take any language course, so I guess that’s a good thing.
thanks for the gen ed tip, I’ll look into that.
and just fyi, I’m an engineering major and I plan to go into chemical engineering department.</p>
<p>If you’re doing engineering, you’re going to want to get your GenEd courses out of the way ASAP. Honestly, I’d even consider adding another class if I were you, but I like to pack my schedules to the max. I’m a physics major, and I’m taking 21 credits this fall…Physics, Calculus, Chemistry, Anthropology, and Spanish. Should be a fun and challenging semester.</p>
<p>It is usually advisable for first semester freshmen to take a lighter schedule, but it all depends on the person.</p>
<p>^ I was considering taking Chem II, Physics I, Calculus III, and Linear Algebra this coming semester before I realized the school I am transferring to didn’t require a secondary science, so I replaced Chem II with a foreign language (just for fun).</p>
<p>I’ll second the idea of adding another GenEd though.</p>
<p>I’m still only an incoming freshman, but I’ve heard the advice from engineers that it’s a good idea to save the GEs so you have an easy classes to work with throughout a really difficult schedule. But errh, I’m not sure because I want to get rid of all the things that aren’t math and science ASAP as well! (Had I actually passed some of my failed AP tests I’d be doing sciences for GE)</p>
<p>Personally, I want to get my gened classes completed as soon as possible. They usually aren’t really that difficult, but many of them can have a fairly heavy writing component, and can end up taking up a lot of time. Math and science classes aren’t “easy” by any means, but they don’t usually require writing extensive research papers and such.</p>
<p>Not having to worry about writing multiple papers through the semester makes things a lot easier in my experience.</p>
<p>I’ve heard the recommendation that you should save geneds to have an “easier” class during your upper level classes, but it doesn’t really appeal to me.</p>
<p>There is the option of researching up on ratemyprofessors/other websites and class syllabi to find out the intensiveness (and if writing is avoidable, given you have the ‘nice’ professor) for each GE class and pick the easiest.</p>
<p>I’m just putting this out because I’m still not sure how difficult the GE classes and engineering classes actually are… I’ve always wanted all math/science classes (fun) on my schedule at one point in my life, and I’ll soon find out how it is :)</p>
<p>The issue I see with saving some GenEd’s for later is that they can be deceptive at times. Easy class, but it offsets the difficulty with the amount of homework you need to do, primarily busywork.</p>
<p>Good example, my sister took an intro psychology course and throughout the semester the class was required to write summaries of the chapters as graded assignments.</p>
<p>Seems ridiculous to me, and I would not want to waste time doing something like that (that doesn’t interest me in the slightest) and spend more time on the courses that are actually important to the major.</p>
<p>That’s exactly it. Many gened courses are easy, but that doesn’t mean that they don’t require any time. Writing research papers and such comes very easily to me…but it still takes a lot of time to do it well. I’ve gotten a lot of my geneds done already. I’ll have one during each of the next two semesters, and then I’m taking my last two next summer. After that, I’ll be done with all of my geneds, aside from a biology class, but I view that differently. After next summer, I’ll only have math and science courses for the rest of my undergrad.</p>