How many hours do you personally spend studying outside of class, per hour in class, for STEM courses?
I.E For Physics my estimation is I spent 1.5 hours per hour in class; Calculus 1.0 hours outside class per hour in class.
I’m really curious to see how much time, the average/majority of students majoring in STEM, dedicate to their studies in order to achieve a good GPA(2.7+). First semester students do not count. This will give me an idea of how many hours, I will need to dedicate to my school work and if I should chance adding one more class to my schedule. Saying you study 40 hours a week does not say much because we have no idea how many classes you are taking.
The standard estimate is that you should spend 3 hours per week per credit hour, including in-class and out-of-class time. This means 45-48 hours per week for a 15-16 credit hour course load needed to graduate in 8 semesters.
In practice, weekly time spent in college has been declining over the years. However, you should expect a relatively higher time commitment for courses with the following:
Labs.
Computer programming assignments.
Art studio.
Music performance.
Big term projects.
Also, “good GPA” is commonly 3.0 or higher for passing employers’ initial screening. If there is secondary admission to your desired major at your college, “good GPA” depends on that as well. And if you are pre-med, “good GPA” is probably at least 3.7.
When I was in college:
For physics, more. Granted I took a more advanced courses my first year (the entire course was mostly juniors/seniors). I would say about 10 hours a week once I average out my “all in before exam” days.
For math in my first year including Honors Linear Algebra and Modern Algebra, I would say more. 5 hours a day (I never had proper exposure to proofs so it was the only real way to catch up) for the 1 class seems more reasonable.
For machine learning, I would say about 35~45 hours a week? Think I scored the highest in class in the essay portion of my midterm so probably not a good example especially when considering the school I attended is currently considered top 3 in US News undergrad national ranking.
For philosophy (and many of my humanities courses), I would say 0~2 minutes a week at most? Somehow, I received A’s in some of those courses.
For more difficult humanities courses that required 15 page essays routinely every month or two with quite a lot of reading, I would say 1~3 hours a week at most and a “one nighter” (granted this is a poor way to write an essay but procrastination is a thing) with essays each time?
Basically, for me, it swinged widely. Some courses were full time jobs in themselves and other courses required zero effort in my part.
There were definitely courses I felt I just didn’t have the time (and maturity in thinking) to do well despite the number of hours I put in outside work-study.
But I believe this isn’t the norm. I had sections in which I had one of the highest if not the highest scores in a class of 100~300 students (and mind you, the school I attended was very reputable). Plus, college isn’t high school. The chance of being the top student in your course is rather slim. Don’t go crazy over it. I didn’t see much differences between a student who earned a B~B+ and a student who earned an A. The grading felt arbitrary with curved exams. Also, I felt many times some students who were getting Bs to have a stronger grasp of the subject than the students receiving As. (Not the norm but something I evidenced myself which helped me realize grading in STEM was pretty stupid. It favors test taking skills over utilization of knowledge. A few students who got Cs could have gotten it because of a poor exam score. A student who had inadequate knowledge of the subject could have gotten As because of a lucky final exam score. And then there’s the issue of rampant cheating and all in today’s universities which seriously penalizes integrity (in the grading scale).)
I would say, study enough so that you feel challenged and you are either understanding the material fully or trying your best with the time available to do so.
It is much more satisfying to get a B or C or whatever after studying in a course basically full time over getting an A in a course that one puts zero efforts in.
However, I did notice for “career” purposes, taking easier courses for "A"s were better looking better. But I have no regrets personally. Up to what point would you fake yourself to suck up to society?
College is a place to train your mind. Challenge yourself. Just do your best.
That isn’t considered good GPA by most people even in STEM. UCB is more correct what a “good GPA” is though 3.0 seems just an average GPA, not a ‘good’ one. A good GPA in my perspective outside med and grad school is around 3.4.
If you consider med school, 3.7+. If you consider phd, probably 3.8+ with researches, etc…
That makes a lot of sense Do you think this estimation applies to STEM majors as well? I can see it being the case with social sciences or business majors. Thank you for the info! Are internships equally as important as a Solid GPA? It is pretty much mandatory to do an internship nowadays for software developers? I’d prefer to spend my summers in summer school. However, if I find out that internships are crucial, I will avoid taking summer courses.
25 hours a week outside of class for Honors Linear Algebra! That’s brutal. This is because you were aiming for an A? . There is less return on investment every extra hour you put in. So I plan to study enough to maintain a 3.0 GPA. I don’t think its worth spending an extra year or two in school, taking one less class per semester, to achieve a 3.5+ GPA for me personally. The parents expect me to move out soon lol. How much time do you think the"average" student at regular university needs to dedicate outside of class to get an B grade for classes such as Calc I, II, Discret math, differential equations I appreciate the reply! This is the last week to add an extra class to my schedule. I’m really trying to guesstimate how much time weekly I’d need to spend on Calc I this semester.
A solid GPA will help you avoid getting screened out before the interview by employers for internships as well as jobs at graduation. Obviously, work experience in internships will help when seeking jobs at graduation.
NACE surveys indicate that about 70% of employers hiring new college graduates prescreen by GPA (and other things), with about 60% of those using a 3.0 cutoff.
To be fair, there were some courses in which for certain sections of exams, I scored the highest in the class.
And I know some friends in which in an average exam score of a 30 (with an A being 32), scored a 100.
It really depends on your goals.
For me, grades were largely unimportant. I just simply wanted to challenge myself (and not feel much regrets after).
Nevertheless, I don’t think it’s the norm to expect such outcomes in college. College isn’t high school.
Study enough to feel comfortable about the subject. That might mean 0 minutes a year (and not even bothering to attend class). Or that might mean all your free time.
And if you want to maintain a 3.0, aim for a 3.3. People tend to gain results lower than they expect.
You got all the time in the world during college. Some of my peers took 20+ credits a semester with a near full time job while maintaining a near 4.0 GPA.
Not saying you should expect a 3.5+ GPA but don’t think of it as being a trade off for “one less class per semester”.
The goal of attending college is to challenge yourself and hopefully “better yourself” within the 4 years. If your goal of college is to party and have fun instead of being a student, then college could end up being a poor investment vehicle for you.
Remember, once you leave to the real world, you are now competing against the market. A market which includes people from all over the world and a market in which some group of people are willing to work more than you for a lower pay. (e.g.: outsourcing)
Differential Equations is going to requite significantly more hours than any of the others: Calc I, II, Discrete math.
It also depends on your computational ability.
For Calc I, II, Discrete Math, I would assume like a few hour a week for most schools? Could be good enough to even justify an A.
For Differential Equations, I would assume whatever number of hours you spend in Calc II times 2.5~3 a week? Could be good to even justify an A.
It really depends how fast you grasp the concepts. If you could grasp the notion of Integration within a few minutes, then you probably understood the entirety of Calculus I and Calculus II right there. If not, oh well.
Internships trump GPA in the work force.
Especially once GPA is around 3.3.
Now, getting your first internship with a low GPA is a difficult one. How would companies judge whether to take a risk or not outside the GPA metric in the start?
Gotcha. Even though the goal should be to strive over the cutoff. Realistically with hard work and consistency, I believe at least a B average is attainable.
You are an overachiever and brilliant. I’m just puzzled by how your motivation was merely to challenge yourself? Point noted, I will aim for a 3.3. That way a 3.0 is almost certain. I also work part-time and have very little free time. Partying is not my intention. It’s just that adding one more class per semester could mean finishing the degree in one less year. I just realized I made a mistake, Its actually linear algebra that I have to take for Computer science. Whew! I got it mixed up with differential equations. No wonder I was confused how you could spend 25 hours on a 3 unit, 2.5 hour per week course. Is one summer internship enough? Originally I planned to spend my summers taking classes. A couple hours per week studing/hw outside class for Calc I, II, Discret, as in 5 hours outside class or more so about 10 hours for the ‘typical” student ? The deadline to add classes is soon and I have been debating whether I should add a fourth class. I took stats and Pre Calc in high school. But college is more fast paced.
There are no certainties in life except taxes and death. And even then, at least one of them is uncertain.
Well, I guess you can then argue the only thing certain philosophically is “cogito ergo sum”.
A regular linear algebra course is very different from a proof linear algebra course. The regular linear algebra course is just playing around with matrices. I’m going to assume you are familiar with matrices from Pre-Calculus. A bunch of multiplication/addition. Simple pattern matching at end of day.
PreCalculus as a whole prepares you for Linear Algebra.
Trigonometry in PreCalculus prepares you (vaguely) for Calculus.
I don’t understand. Points say nothing about the rigour of a course.
Some of the lightest work I had were 4~5 points. Some of the most difficult work I had were 3 points.
Points don’t say much outside the number of lectures a week.
There are 3 point courses that feel like full time jobs. There are 5 point courses that make you wonder if you even need to read a single page all semester (and why you are paying your parent’s/your hard earned money for such a worthless course).
What’s your goal? At highly selective firms. No.
In the average firm, yes.
Try not to spend more money than needed on education especially if you have to work part time for it. Room and boarding adds up quick.
But don’t let “graduating early” be a goal. It’s better to have at least 1 internship and graduate than have no internships and graduate a year earlier.
Only you know yourself. I have no idea how competent a “typical” student is.
I would assume 2~4 hours a week outside class to perform a potential ‘A’?
It really depends on the individual at end of day.
If you struggled in those, then you will most probably struggle in higher level courses.
If you didn’t struggle as much in those, then you might not struggle as much in higher level courses.
That said, don’t let a name like “Calculus” worry you. It’s just another math course. Unless your school is named CalTech and forces everyone to use Apostol’s book (which most undergraduates in US would then be unable to graduate), it’s do-able.
Note that different students find different courses intellectually more or less difficult. For example, one student may find linear algebra harder than calculus, while another student may find linear algebra easier than calculus (assuming regular sophomore level linear algebra, not honors or upper level proof-heavy linear algebra). Math courses do not generally have high baseline workloads, but a student who finds a particular one intellectually difficult may find that s/he has to put in a lot more work on it than other math courses.
When I was an undergrad, I spent a lot of time studying. It was at least forty hours a week. I’d study a lot more for classes I actually cared about getting a good grade in.
As a graduate student, I am basically trying to keep my head above water with all of my assignments, work, and home life. I am basically “learning as I go”. I still need good grades and I should probably study more but it is what it is at this point. Earlier in the semester, I was spending anywhere from 5-10 hours per week on one of my three credit graduate classes. I felt like that was just barely enough.
Sometimes you just need to get crap done and work through the problems without reading the book. You can literally google your way out of problems or just think of how to get around a problem and work it out. Usually I break down a problem into small parts and solve all the smaller pieces until a full solution is apparent.
In undergrad, there was definitely a lot more to learn in a short amount of time as when I went to school I was on the quarter system. I got a mix of A’s and B’s, depending on the class and how it was curved. Most people did really badly in most of my upper-division classes and I was usually a bit better than average.