Hi, I’m a freshman planning my class schedule for next spring semester. I come with zero credits and need 122 to graduate, so that means i should take about 16 per semester to graduate in 4 years.
My current 4 classes in the list:
Math - Linear Algebra (4 credits)
CS - Object-Oriented Programming in Java (3 credits)
Intro Psych (3 credits)
English II (3 credits)
Totals to 13 credits. I need to take one more class, and it’s either one of these:
Earth Science with lab (4 credits)
History - American Constitution (3 credits)
I am definitely not good at History, so I figured taking it with the known-to-be difficult Linear Algebra class might not be a good idea. However, the Earth Science class has 4 credits and an 8 AM lab (though it’s most likely easier than History); I’m scared of not being able to manage my time. If i do take that Earth class I’ll have 17 credits.
Please give me advice on which class to take, and whether it will be the right choice to take 17 credits.
I would talk to your advisor first and get their input. Also see if you can talk to students who have taken the two courses you are considering to ask about course load. Does your school use ratemyprofessor? If so, look there too!
In my daughter’s experience, there wasn’t much difference between a 3 and 4 credit class in terms of work load so my advice is to take the class that seems most interesting to you.
This is what stands out to me. The difference between a course that you are good at versus a course that you are not good at, IMHO, is likely to have more impact on the difficulty than the difference between 3 credits and 4 credits.
History can also in some cases require a large amount of reading. This leads to the obvious question of how you feel about an 8am lab versus a lot of reading.
Personally I did not find linear algebra to be all that hard. However, I was a math major so my views on the difficulty of math courses might be slanted. I did find it helpful at some point to spend a few hours working through examples on paper to fully understand the intuitive meaning of the various operations that can be done with matrices.
Over a full four years of university it is not unusual to find some class at some point that you just need to drop or get an incomplete in, so getting ahead by a class somewhere can be helpful in the end. At least one of my daughters got some credits over the summer. In two cases this was by taking a short intensive class. One was an intensive French class – you go on-site at a French-language university and speak nothing but French for a full five weeks. The other was a biology field class – you go on site in a wild area and study the local biology. Doing something over the summer is another way to get a bit ahead in terms of the credits that you will eventually need to graduate. There can be a rather wide range in terms of what this will cost.
Agree with what others have said but effectively yes, expectation is that you’re averaging 15-16 credit hours/semester. If you trend below that you’re going to need to take summer classes or be on a 4+ year program. If you can do more than that you can lighten your load some senior year. My guess is you need to take the History class at some point.
If you’re undeclared/undecided it might be difficult for you to map out what the next couple of semesters might look like but if you’re in a program/major most of them map out what your time in that program should approximate for when you should take certain classes - usually with some flexibility.
Hi. This sounds like a heavy load to me. What college are you going to? Maybe you could satisfy some distributional requirements with CLEP exams, so that you can carry a lighter load? You could do a class or two over winter break on modernstates.org, and then take the CLEP exams - they give you a free voucher. You have to look up which CLEP exams your college will accept.
Of the two classes you mentioned, unless you need to take Earth Science to satisfy a distributional requirement, I’d go with the history class, because with all the political BS going on in this nation now, it’s definitely a good idea to know the Constitution. Check to see if the teacher is any good. Also, that is a perfect requirement to satisfy via CLEP, if they allow it.
In terms of workload, CS courses with programming and lab science courses can consume a lot of time, even if they are not difficult for you. English and history could have a high volume of reading; the time commitment can depend on whether you are a fast or slow reader when reading with good comprehension.
Is there a reason your choices for the last course have to be earth science or history?
I think you can do either. Good that you realize you need to take 16+ per semester (and you may get to a semester you start with 16 and need to drop one class - it happens). My daughter needed 131 credits so always started with about 17, did have to drop a class one semester so only had 14, but it worked out fine. By her last semester, she was taking tennis, Spanish, and one other ‘just for fun’ class, but she did have her senior project.
Try to balance your classes between ones with labs and ones with a lot of reading or papers (as opposed to tests). Psych and English might have more reading, so for this semester science might be better. That 8 am lab will build character!