How many hours does a typical freshman need to study?

<p>I have tried finding the answer to this question elsewhere without much luck, but how many hours does a typical college freshman need to study and do school work in order to get a good (>3.5) gpa? I realize it depends on the person and major, but I'm sure there's some standard range which people tend to fall under.</p>

<p>Yeah it really does depend on the person and major. First semester last year I really did not do much work and got a 3.6. Last semester I did more work and got a 3.8. This summer semester I didn’t do much work and will probably get a 3.0.</p>

<p>The standard range is approximately 0-60 hours a week. That’s about the best anyone will be able to narrow it down for you. </p>

<p>The most quoted figure is that you should spend 2 hours outside of class for every hour in class on school work. In reality, this number varies hugely from class to class, and differ by person.</p>

<p>When you go in, spend more time then you think you’d need. You’ll eventually get a feel for how much time you need.</p>

<p>The two hours rule is a suggestion. You should ALLOW that much time for each class, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you need to use it. </p>

<p>I studied barely at all first semester and got a 4.0. I worked about the same amount second semester, but made a 3.7. It’s all about adjusting your time spent with your schedule.</p>

<p>Depends based mostly on</p>

<ol>
<li><p>Where you go to college</p></li>
<li><p>What your major is</p></li>
</ol>

<p>It depends. I was a chemistry major at my CC and my Gen Chem course required significantly more work than say, my British Literature course.</p>

<p>It all depends on the major, the courses you’re taking, the person and where/how you’ll be studying. If you know the best way you study and learn the material (be it English, Psych, or a physical science), it’ll take you less time to get everything down if you’re doing it the “wrong” way for you. Or if you’re doing it with Netflix going on half the screen (like I am currently) and doing other stuff on the computer (again, like me) or with the people around you.</p>

<p>I don’t remember studying much in my freshman year. My classes were mostly all easy general education classes, and the harder ones required projects that took time to do. However, I also knew people who studied for hours every day for those same classes. It will simply depend on how well you know the subject. If you paid attention in high school general education courses will probably not be a problem for you. Sometimes, of course, you might get that one professor that makes their American history freshman-level class feel like grad school or something. So it depends a lot on the professor too.</p>

<p>With college studying is different than it was in high school. With some classes there will only be maybe two or three major tests the whole semester, and that’s it. Some professors in courses like history or English might only require essays. Or it could be the other way around and you’ll have professors that give quizzes every class. So it’s different with each class and each professor. You might not always have studying and homework to do every night like in high school, but because of this it’s easy to get lazy and put off studying until just a couple of weeks before finals.</p>

<p>Nominally, a credit hour is supposed to indicate 3 hours of work per week, including class time and out of class time. So a nominal 15 credit hour course load is supposed to take 45 hours per week.</p>

<p>In reality, a lot of courses at a lot of schools take a lot less time than that. However, courses with science labs, art studio, music performance, lots of computer programming, or large term projects tend to take more time to complete the work for, even if their credit value is the same as courses without these features.</p>

<p>Obviously, if you are good at and interested in some subject, you can spend less time to learn the material than if you are not as good at or interested in the subject.</p>

<p>Depends…I rarely had to study for my math and science class but for english and history I would HAVE to study. It depends on what you are good at, you can study the stuff you get less but the stuff you have trouble getting you will need to study more.</p>

<p>Well can you guys give your major, what year, and how many hours you studied per day on average?</p>

<p>It really does depend on the classes you’re taking, your aptitude in these subjects, and your major. The rule of thumb that they gave us at orientation was that you should study 2.5 hours for every hour you spend in class. Also, certain professors will recommend that you spend a certain amount of time on their material, so it really can vary.</p>

<p>I’m a computer engineering major, but I was electrical for my first semester, then switched.
My first semester during freshman year, I took Engineering Chemistry (chem I and II put together in one course), the lab that came with it, Engineering Economics, Engineering Calculus I, and American History II (for humanities req). The total was 15 credit hours, which wasn’t much, but it amounted to almost 38 hours of study time per week.<br>
To be entirely honest, I probably studied about two or three hours every week, and that was mostly because the chemistry class and lab assigned a lot of homework. Nothing else in my courseload demanded more. I knew others who had the exact same schedule or very close to mine, and of them, two studied > 20, one studied about 5, and another studied so much we hardly ever saw him for the rest of that semester.<br>
It really does depend on how well you grasp information, how well you remember it, and how good you are at the subjects.</p>

<p>It depends on the school, the class, who’s teaching the class, when the class is being taught, who you are, who’s in your class, you, time point relative to holidays and exam cycles, and everything else everyone above said so much that this question can’t be answered. 2 hours per hour of class is about as reliable as 96 hours per hour of class. It was almost no different than high school for me. If you look up “students studying less,” you’ll find that the average is about 25-30 hours per week. For me, an extreme procrastinator, an average week was about 5 hours homework/“studying” outside of class per week, and during exam weeks, about 50 hours studying. Averaging it out… I guess 20-30 hours is a pretty good estimate.</p>

<p>It depends on the person…I am an upcoming senior public health major… with a 3.9 gpa. I do not study everyday. But I do attend every class, pay attention and take good notes. I procrastinate and even write papers at the last minute. Going to every class has helped me and even clarifying my notes with the professors help… Good luck!</p>