<p>Honor courses may affect GPA and occupy much time.
So is it better to take more normal-level courses with perfect GPA rather than to take honor courses?Or save time to take grad courses?</p>
<p>How do these affect phd application?</p>
<p>Personally, I don't think it really matters too much. It seems like a lot more work and a little more (if any) benefits. Taking more advanced courses (such as grad courses) would be more useful when applying to grad school.</p>
<p>how do you take grad level courses as an undergrad? Do you approach the professor in question?</p>
<p>And... of course, you'd be taking the course with graduate students earning their Ph.Ds?</p>
<p>You're generally expected to start taking graduate level classes by the time you're an upperclassman. I know in my department, we generally had a dual enrollment type of thing going on where 500-level was undergrad and 700-level was graduate. In most classes the material was identical, though in some grad-level ones they had an extra half hour of class each day or an extra problem on the homework sets.</p>
<p>Grad level classes aren't really that much more difficult, it's just they tend to be the much more specialized classes offered by departments.</p>
<p>You don't have to do anything at my school. The first couple graduate courses for math at my school are actually intended to have overlap between advanced undergrads and beginning PhD students getting ready for their qualifying exams.</p>
<p>In order to take graduate courses, you must demonstrate to the professor of that the course is appropriate for you (there's usually a paper that must be signed by both the student and faculty). I took 2 graduate courses during my undergrad: one at my institution, and another at Carnegie Mellon. I took both my senior year, but you may be able to take a grad course as early as your junior year. There were 2 reasons I was allowed to take the courses (and I believe these will hold true for any other institution).</p>
<ol>
<li>I was doing my undergraduate thesis with a faculty member at my university in Bioinformatics. The course in Bioinformatics was only offered as a graduate course (I think it is that way at most institutions) so she allowed me to take the course with her written consent because it was useful and appropriate to my studies.</li>
<li>I took another graduate course in Mass Spectrometry at CMU due to a cross-registration agreement that all Pittsburgh area universities have with one another. I was allowed to take this course because I had completed all the necessary pre-requisites and it was a science elective that was relevant to my major.</li>
</ol>
<p>Basically, if the graduate course has relevance to your degree, research, or career goals and you've taken the appropriate pre-reqs, you can take a graduate level course. For example, I doubt a student would be allowed to take a graduate Quantum Mechanics course if they were a Political Science major.</p>