hw at stanford

Colleges and Universities A-Z Stanford University
21

<p>geez guys, you’re blowing this way out of proportion. i never said i don’t want to work hard, all i said was that i want to have a life too. 2 hours of socializing a night and the rest doing work doesn’t sound like a healthy and balanced life. </p>

<p>“Then why don’t you apply to schools that are less rigorous than Stanford? You’d save a boatload of money as well. Some of us don’t mind the school work - in fact, that’s the reason I’m going to college. If I just wanted a social life, or a lighter combination of the two, I could easily buy an apartment in a city with a roommate and attend their community college or a commuter school, making my own social interactions.”</p>

<p>give me a break. people are doing about 2 hours a night at UCLA, which is obviously considered a great and prestigious university. you don’t have to go to a freaking community college to have a life besides academics. wow. again, i want to get a great education, but one obviously doesn’t have to endure as much work as it sounds like many stanford students do to get that great education.</p>

22

<p>You should think about applying to Chapman for film too! You shouldn’t worry too much if you’re in love with what you’re doing and be able to crank out your homework in a couple hours. Doing it in groups makes it go by faster too. And Don’t forget to look at the grading curves because they will probably be different. Unless you want that 4.0, you shouldn’t have to worry.</p>

23

<p>thanks, diglett! yeah i’m thinking about applying to chapman too. :D</p>

24

<p>Well, I’m not going to generalize anymore, so I’ll just talk about my own experience. The amount of homework I have is rarely constant, even within a quarter. A lot of my classes assign projects rather than high school style “homework”. So in any given week (any non-crazy week, at least) I’ll have nights where I do 0-2 hours of work, and I’ll have nights where I do 6+ hours of work. Practically everyone here is involved in some kind of student organization outside of their schoolwork. </p>

<p>I think an important point to consider, though, is that not everyone here hates doing their homework. Sure, it gets tedious for everyone sometimes, but most people would say that there’s something about their major that they really like, or else they wouldn’t have picked that major. Doing work shouldn’t always be a chore.</p>

25

<p>It really depends on the night. This past quarter, I only did homework monday, tuesday, and wednesday nights and then thursday during the day. My economics class had one problem set a week that took around three or four hours to complete. Spanish has a portfolio due every week, a composition due every monday, and a quiz every wednesday. And then my IHUM had a paragraph response due every monday and wedensday and then a five page paper every five weeks.</p>

<p>They told us at the beginning of the quarter to expect to spend the number of units you are taking as how long you’ll be studying outside of class.
For example, I took 16 units, so I should have spent 16 hours a week doing homework/studying…though this DEFINITELY wasn’t the case. haha.</p>

<p>Like someone said before, it’s all about how much effort you put into it.</p>

26

<p>*2 hours of socializing a night and the rest doing work doesn’t sound like a healthy and balanced life. *
Dude, 2 hours a night is a LOT. You gotta do work at some point. You’re coming from a background where you’re used to a lot of free time, so Stanford would be quite different. At my high school everybody’s doing 3 or more hours of homework a night - its a shock at first but eventually you get used to it. And it makes your free time all the better!</p>

27

<p>“Dude, 2 hours a night is a LOT. You gotta do work at some point. You’re coming from a background where you’re used to a lot of free time, so Stanford would be quite different. At my high school everybody’s doing 3 or more hours of homework a night - its a shock at first but eventually you get used to it. And it makes your free time all the better!”</p>

<p>maybe at stanford, but again, a lot of top universities (ok so maybe not top 5 like stanford but top 30 is still great to me cuz prestige isn’t the most important thing to me) have wayyy less hw than stanford! so i don’t see why i’d WANT to get used to it at stanford when i could have a more enjoyable time and still get a great education somewhere else. it makes a ton of sense for someone who’s major of interest is the executed the best at stanford or who wants the stanford name post-grad or something to that degree but those things don’t apply to me personally as an aspiring filmmaker. </p>

<p>just to clarify, would this make sense to you if you were me?</p>

<p>let’s say i got into stanford, usc film school, and ucla. usc film school is obviously the best for film and ucla is great for it too. they also give less hw and would allow me to enjoy myself more. so would there be any good reason for me to choose stanford? </p>

<p>better professors overall, maybe, but–like at any school–there will be great professors, ok professors, and bad professors at stanford (just like there will be at usc, ucla, etc), so i dunno it’s enough of a reason. perhaps a more intellectual student body? i’d enjoy that, but again, i’d meet plenty of smart and driven people at the other schools too. so, yeah…i dunno if i’m gonna apply. it doesn’t really make sense for me, i guess, which is a shame cuz i really do like what stanford stands for and the people that make up the student body. although there’s always a chance that i’ll be rejected from usc and ucla and get into stanford cuz stanford is a little less numbers-based, but it’s STANFORD! that’s kinda unlikely.</p>

28

<p>Stanford doesn’t sound right for you at all. Some of us don’t mind the work. My only concern is not being quite prepared for the work, rather than how much of it there is. I’ve actually heard two hours for every unit you are taking - so 16 units would be 32 hours outside of class but 16 inside of class. That’s still only 48 hours per week.</p>

29

<p>and how do YOU know you won’t mind the work, applicannot? when you come from what sounds like the very least rigorous high school i’ve ever heard of in my life (way less rigorous even my middle school, maybe on par with my elementary school), you’re obviously not at all used to the kind of work stanford is gonna make you do. unless of course you had a very demanding part-time job or some other similar circumstance, in which case, i guess you would know if you enjoy a lot of work or not. but still, you even admitted that you’re not used to rigorous academic work. so how do you know you won’t indeed mind it until you’ve actually experienced it? perhaps your major at stanford is one that other schools don’t cover better and you feel driven to work your butt off for it? ok, makes sense. it’s the same with me. i work 15 hours a week on my screenwriting; i don’t dislike hard work itself. i dislike the idea of unnecessary hard work (i.e. working my butt of at stanford when it doesn’t even offer the best major for me or the post-grad connections we all need in this economy).</p>

30

<p>Well, considering I spend 25 hours a week as a cashier, I can handle “work.” And school work is at least work I enjoy. It’s not about having experienced the work. I don’t go to a rigorous school because I don’t have any other choice. It’s all about where you live and what you can afford. Right now, I can afford something slightly better than the school where I live. I CHOSE to work more so I could attend a school where I could take more rigorous classes. Sure I’m not used to it. But I’m going to college for the classes, not for the social life. Thankfully they coexist quite peacefully. I know I won’t mind it because I love to learn. I love it. Even when that means long hours in front of a text book or problem set. Even if that means getting Cs when putting in my best effort. I don’t even mind unnecessary hard work. Do I HAVE to work 25 hours per week? No, but I want to have the internet, nice clothes, and a private education. That’s where we differ altogether.</p>

31

<p>^unless you have reading comprehension problems, you’ll see that i already provided for the possibility that you had a job and can handle work. </p>

<p>you say you love to learn so you won’t mind unnecessary work? let’s hope that turns out true for you. i know from my experience and many of my classmates’ experiences that having lots of unnecessary work can actually be very detrimental to one’s love of learning. a lot of people are burnt out after high school after doing a ton of unnecessary work all 4 years and usually for 3 years before that in middle school. a lot of people want a little break from that in college, a chance to develop other aspects of oneself besides just their brain. believe it or not, there are plenty of other skills you need to be successful in the world besides a lot of knowledge or a strong work ethic. while these things are important, they are not be-all-end-alls. you also need social skills; you need connections; you need practical training in your chosen field; you need to have time to get internships; you can benefit highly from joining groups and expanding your interests/horizons, etc. </p>

<p>“Sure I’m not used to it. But I’m going to college for the classes, not for the social life. Thankfully they coexist quite peacefully.”</p>

<p>doesn’t really sound like it will at stanford. besides i never said i was going for the social life. i don’t drink, party, do drugs, nada and am not going to start in college. when i say i want a balanced life, it’s not about “social life” in the traditional sense, but in the sense that i mentioned above: the chance to develop social skills, interests, get an internship, learn about my craft, make connections, and yeah you know i WOULD like to have a little fun in college too. sue me.</p>

<p>“Even when that means long hours in front of a text book or problem set”</p>

<p>i still don’t get how you would know. you’ve never done either of those, right? so you can only HOPE you won’t mind the workload. </p>

<p>“Do I HAVE to work 25 hours per week? No, but I want to have the internet, nice clothes, and a private education. That’s where we differ altogether.”</p>

<p>so your work is NOT unnecessary. it’s getting you something (internet, nice clothes, private education). would you choose to be a cashier for 25 hours a week if you weren’t getting paid? highly doubtful. it seems you don’t just enjoy work for the sake of work or because you enjoy unnecessary work. it’s always a means to another end. like it is for the great majority of people. maybe in regards to unnecessary work at stanford, for you it’s just “the joy of learning”. a nice idea, sure, but impractical in our current job market. i want to go to college for the joy of learning too, but not JUST that. like i’ve said many times before, i want the college i choose to train me for my career and open doors for me in that career afterwards. stanford won’t do that for MY career as a filmmaker. i don’t have the money or time to throw around on a college that won’t provide me at least that. maybe you do; maybe you can go to college just to learn, to hell with a practical career afterwards! if so, you’re in an enviable position. </p>

<p>OR maybe you are one of those people for whom stanford WOULD provide practical career training AND post-grad connections. then it would make sense. but don’t fault me for not wanting to go to a really difficult school that doesn’t offer me the major i want OR post-grad connections in my field when i could go to a school that offers me both AND more free time to pursue my other interests/internships/make friends/etc.</p>

32

<p>I think you might be right that Stanford isn’t the best place for you if you want to learn practical filmmaking. Other schools like USC and NYU definitely have more notable film programs where you’ll get more practical experience. I don’t really know what the Stanford film department is like, so I’m guessing it must be pretty small. </p>

<p>It sounds to me like your quarrel is with the general concept of a liberal arts education. Stanford aims less to teach you exactly what you need to know to do a job, and more <em>how</em> to think. Adaptability and the ability to learn new concepts quickly is more important than knowing super-specific skills, especially as someone in your late teens/early twenties. Industry-specific skills go out of date quickly, but knowing “how to think” will always be useful.</p>

<p>That said, Stanford isn’t a true liberal arts college either. The distribution requirements aren’t really that prohibitive. If you’re interested in film, I’d say you could probably do roughly half of your quarters at Stanford taking ONLY film classes. You mentioned that you hate pointless work, but would you consider doing a lot of film-related work (say, 30 hours a week of film homework) a chore rather than a privilege?</p>

33

<p>I’m in a pretty strong private school. It’s not the hardest high school, but it does have some work.
I took a college class at Stanford last summer, and it happened to be that I was the only high school student and most of the others were Stanford students. The homework length, considering that it was an accelerated class and each lecture was 2hrs each, was not long at all. Most of the time less than 1hr and a half. And I got an A. My two Stanford students I became friends with were getting Bs. Yes, I was taking a class I was strong at, and they were taking it to cover requirements, but considering that I was a high school student and they were in the summer going into their junior year, it really depends on how you manage work.</p>

34

<p>I attended the Stanford Summer College, and while it is not “real college” I still took actual undergraduate classes with real undergreaduates. A normal courseload I believe is around 15, and I took 11 Units, but I took it in 8 weeks instead of 10. For the two classes that I had, one had virtually no homework other than to read a chapter from a text book which took about 20 minutes and was due every 3 days. And for the other class (Chemistry) every week there was a problem set and a lab due (Just a more focused problem set). Collectively they took about 6 hours and we did it in a huge group every Sunday night, so it was actually kind of fun. Also there were chapter readings due every day which took about 10 minutes and they included an optional set of questions if you wanted extra material for studying.</p>

<p>So If you factor in the shorter time span for my classes, I took only a slightly smaller than average course load and ended up with about 1 hour of homework every day (If I wanted to break it up that way). Also, I talked without other students who were there with me, and none of them had nearly as much homework as me so I think Chemistry just had a larger than average homework load, which at 1 hour a night was far from burdensome.</p>

<p>I would expect that more homework will come as you progress through your Sophmore and Junior years, but Stanford is a pretty laid back place so don’t expect to be bogged down by homework unless you let it pile up on you.</p>

<p>I hope that this was helpful.</p>

35

<p>A rule of thumb, as a professor said my freshman year, is to take the number of units a class is, multiply it by three, and that’s the number of hours you should be spending on the class per week–including lectures/section, reading, assignments, studying, and office hours. Of course, this isn’t a hard and fast rule, and it really depends on who you are and even what department it is (all math courses, for example, are 3 units, while many courses considered to be much easier are 5).</p>

<p>For me, I think that ratio is more like 2 at best.</p>

36

<p>

</p>

<p>Nope. Just wanted to clarify for you.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>There’s one big problem here. I don’t think any of the work is unnecessary. It’s not like we’re going to be churning out a dozen worksheets a week like we do in high school. We choose the classes and we study the material. No, I don’t want to take the Engineering requirement - but then I found the non-major Introduction to Computers, and now I’m psyched for it. There is no, or at least very little, unnecessary work. It’s papers and studying and the occasional problem set, not a thousand one paragraph essays on Hamlet. I actually don’t need practical training in my chosen field, since I want a liberal arts education. But everything else can happen while I take classes. Wherein lies the problem?</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>There is where we will simply have to agree to disagree. Two hours a night, plus all meals, in between some classes, and pretty much all day Saturday sounds like a lot of social life to me. Heck, even if I were going to the local high school, that’s way more time than I’d have now. I have no complaints, and that was listed as a minimum for the most part. But maybe we do have a different idea of a social life. My idea of a good time is sitting at a table with friends chatting about the world, our classes, and anything else that tickles our fancy. I’d like to join a student group or two as well, of course.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>You make an awful lot of assumptions. 50% of every pay check goes to my mom for the electric bill. On top of that, she owes me over $3000. I also LOVE volunteering 10+ hours per week. And I PAY and WORK MORE to attend a more rigorous school - sounds like a dedication to learning if you ask me, but we may have different parameters.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Again, this is where we disagree. I’m not going to college for any sort of career training whatsoever. And since I’m going to grad school and probably through to my PhD (thanks Stanford financial aid!), the undergrad is just a liberal arts education for me. JimmyEatWorld nailed it.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>I don’t have the money either, but Stanford does, and if I were going elsewhere, I’d just work for it. Life isn’t all about paying bills and getting a job - at least not for me. You say you want to balance academics and your social life. I want to balance intellectual vitality and my social life. I’ve never had any money. You get used to living a low-income lifestyle. Pretty sure we also have a different idea of a practical career, but that’s pretty normal for anyone.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>In a sense. Stanford is a school that fits me and that works for me. I’m not faulting you. I just told you that Stanford is clearly NOT the right fit for you. Sorry, man. You attacked me.</p>

37

<p>Applicannot, I’m just wondering: how can you not be worried about getting a job after graduation? Just because you’re going to grad school? I guess it differs from career to career. If grad school is a must for your chosen career, then yeah, I wouldn’t be too worried about where I went for undergrad. But like Cadillac, I want to be in the entertainment industry, so I am getting a little nervous about Stanford. </p>

<p>I don’t think I’d really mind the work (well, this depends on the classes I’m taking, but hopefully I’d get the classes that I’m genuinely interested in) but I don’t want to waste my time or my parents’ money if Stanford isn’t going to help me get to where I want to be in the world. I mean, I could always go to grad school for screenwriting (which is a definite possibility), but I wonder what Stanford has to offer me that a school with a good undergrad film major/connections doesn’t. </p>

<p>Can anyone help me out here? Does Stanford ever give post-grad connections in the film industry or is it just silly to go there if my career path is in the entertainment industry? As much as I like Stanford, I just wonder about how practical it would be for me to go there. Any advice would be appreciated.</p>

38

<p>

</p>

<p>Well, I know that I am going to grad school (hopefully straight into my PhD, putting me in the working world in 2020). That means I won’t need a job for at least six more years, and that the school where I get my MA is going to be far more important in terms of career resources and job connections. Plus, unlike a few CCers, I don’t have unrealistic expectations. I’m perfectly happy with a job that pays $35,000 per year, as long as I keep my student loan debt down. That makes it pretty easy to get a job after graduation, especially in my field (probably the social sciences). By the time I enter the working world, I intend to be quite fluent in Arabic or another hot language - excellent for a well-paying back up career. So what would I be worried about? There are plenty of jobs out there, they just aren’t all directly in my field - but my field is far, far broader than film. I’m not going to college to get a career. I could make a considerable amount of money as an electrician - upwards of $75,000 per year - just by going to a vocational school.</p>

39

<p>Okay, yeah, it sounds like your career plans are very different than mine. I wouldn’t be happy with just getting some job in the entertainment industry; I have the very clear goal of running my own TV show and writing/directing movies as well, and I doubt I’d be happy with anything less (in the long-run, I mean. Of course it’s likely that I would start out in a lower-tier entertainment job…although supposedly 7 out of 8 USC Screenwriting grads get jobs as professional screenwriters directly out of college, so that’s certainly something to consider.)</p>

<p>At times I wish my career goals were not so clean-cut or even in the industry I desire. It would certainly give me more freedom to attend schools like Stanford without worrying about breaking into show-biz afterward. :wink: But alas the bitter jest of fate! I love screenwriting! Curse you, passion of mine. </p>

<p>Of course I am not ruling out the idea of screenwriting for grad school and a liberal arts education for undergrad. It’s definitely a strong possibility. So I am going to apply to Stanford in case I decide on this above route. But if anyone has any info on Stanford in the entertainment industry, I’d love to hear about it. :)</p>

40

<p>Ill put in my two cents…
in my opinion, how you feel about the workload is extremely dependent upon several circumstances, including your highschool workload, the classes you choose… etc. personally, i took about 15 credits (which is average) and the work was not ridiculously at all.
For all of you procrastinators, sometimes the situations get stressful and youre stuck with an all-nighter, but im pretty sure many of you are used to that by now.
but in essence, i felt my first quarter of work to actually be easier than high school was (keep in mind that this is my freshman year). ill give you guys the low-down on my schedule. Every week, I was assigned a math problem set. The set took no longer than 10 hours, and you were given a whole week to do them… I had a bit of intensive reading each week for my Philosophy of Physics class, but thats a physics/philosophy major and graduate level class. IHUM assigned two papers and a final project. And philosophy assigned two papers. So for most of the week, I never spent more than 3 or 4 hours on homework a night. And most of that was reading and preparing for exams. If you have strong time management, you really won’t struggle at all. Only very few classes (I think chem is one of them) requires an excessive amount of work.
Also keep in mind that you arent stuck in class for the same 7-8 hours every single day. I had no classes on Mondays, that was my homework day.</p>