<p>oh one more question: if someone is happy with getting say a 3.5 gpa and not striving to get a 4.0, would people look down on that person? like is it a competitive “working hard for a 4.0 is the only way of life” environment or no?</p>
<p>You defiantly will not be looked down on for shooting for a 3.5. No one would look down on you if you were shooting for a 3.0. A lot of people here don’t care as much about their GPA in college as they did in high school. Also, the average graduating GPA is a 3.4, so a 3.5 puts you above the average, defiantly nothing to look down on.</p>
<p>ok good! 
so i wouldn’t be the only one not spending all day after class doing hw, i guess. :P</p>
<p>Advice from an upperclassman:</p>
<p>Freshman year is the easiest. Everyone after that wants to be a freshman. Generally most people take 4 classes after freshman year and the classes tend to have more work than IHUM, Math 51, etc. </p>
<p>Overall though if you want a social life, you can easily have one. You easily can find time to hang out and have fun and do social activities. I took a 20+ hour a week class this quarter plus 3 other techie classes plus have a job. I still had time to hang out, party, and go to football games.</p>
<p>There are times where life get really hard and a couple days a week where you may have to work late and pull an all nighter, but they usually follow periods where you can chill, relax and catch up on rest.</p>
<p>I’m a EE major and I would say outside of class, I generally spend 8 hours average per class per week. So with 4 classes that is 32 hours which means 4-5 hours of homework a day. </p>
<p>Don’t let the workload at Stanford scare you. It is manageable and def should not be a reason not to attend.</p>
<p>Here’s a note: I’m perfectly sure, given what my acquaintances say, that it’s possible to slack off. But, as one would hope, most people probably won’t be aiming to use their 4-ish years merely in order to get a good career – these people probably are viewing it as four priceless years. And all of them have said they really enjoyed the social life. </p>
<p>To whitecadillac – I hope whether you attend UCLA, Stanford, or any of these schools you’re mentioning, you really milk the years for what they are worth, because these are really fantastic places to learn. It sounds like you have a plan in mind as to what you want to study, and you should let that be your guiding factor, because the “average workload” figure is really meaningless.</p>
<p>*oh one more question: if someone is happy with getting say a 3.5 gpa and not striving to get a 4.0, would people look down on that person? like is it a competitive “working hard for a 4.0 is the only way of life” environment or no? *</p>
<p>Well I just finished my first quarter here and I haven’t heard anyone talking about GPA. Don’t worry about it =]</p>
<p>whitecadillac- I don’t know why your posts have sounded borderline belligerent sometimes in this thread, but essentially, the workload is what you make of it, which is EXACTLY what makes Stanford so great.</p>
<p>I was super competitive in high school and completely slacked off my first quarter here (I’m a freshman, and I’m LOVING it), but no one looked down on me at all. My most studious dormmates have only chuckled at my poor work ethic (by my high school standards, at least), and I don’t think anything of the people who work all day and night. College is WHAT YOU MAKE OF IT, and I know that speculation is all you can do right now- because that’s all I did my year before Stanford! - but just know that you’ll find out who you are in college, and you will love it. You will love Stanford (at least, I hope so), and no one will care if you put in fifty hours of homework a week or none!</p>
<p>For my individual case, there would be four-to-five day spans where I would, literally, do no homework at all, then would spend 12 hours doing an essay the night before it was due… and til the afternoon of the due date. I’m more of a do-no-work-then-pull-an-all-nighter kind of person, but my roommate plugs in around one to two hours of homework a night and just stays consistent.</p>
<p>College is what you make of it, and if you want to go to a school where no one will care how much/how little work you do, then Stanford is the perfect place to go. People are chill at Stanford. Seriously.</p>
<p>Good luck to you in your college endeavors.</p>