<p>You’d have time for some EC’s, but by definition you wouldn’t have full-time. And that’s really the key element of a summer: you can focus full-time on your project – whether it’s research, service, a job, whatever. You lose that when you take a class, even a light one.</p>
<p>True, but its not necessarily a drastic drop in time that you can devote to a project, depending on the scheduling of said EC. There should be enough time to do both, even if it means staying in on Friday night once in a while.</p>
<p>The problem is that it “depends on the scheduling of said EC.” Most of the really awesome EC’s aren’t flexible like that – some PI’s won’t be happy with you running out to take classes, and travel plans or community clinics or whatnot will need you on site all the time.</p>
<p>It’s not a question of hours in the day per se; it’s more a question of full-time vs. anything-else.</p>
<p>Well, that would depend on how rigid your EC is then. For example, last summer I did 40 hours/wk of research, volunteered, and was involved in a couple of medically related activities. In my case, my research was flexible enough that I could do nights and weekends. If you have to be there on the dot at a given time every day, then I suppose that would make it harder to do lab work. Also, if you were in southeast asia doing volunteering, that would also make it a bit hard to take classes ;)</p>