I was a business major in college. I knew that engineers did a lot of work, but I never knew how much.
Now DD is a freshman CS major in an Engineering School. She is home on spring break this week and spending most of it working on the homework that is due when she returns next Monday. She has 5 courses this term and the University tracks homework loads closely. She says that the average student reports spending 15 hours per week on homework on non-test weeks for one CS class and 10 hours per week on non-test weeks for her other CS class. Then she has Physics, Physics lab, Econ, and English on top of those.
She is doing well in her classes, but the amount of effort that they require is incredible. I never had a class where the average student spent 15 hours per week on the homework on a typical week.
If this is typical for Engineering majors, then my hat is off to all of you. I never knew how much work it is. At least I am getting my monies worth!
At schools using the credit hour method, 15 to 16 credits is the normal full time course load for students who will graduate in 8 semesters (or 12 quarters).
One credit in such a system is supposed to mean three total hours of work per week, including in-class and out-of-class time, or 45 to 48 total hours per week. Since in-class hours per week for non-lab courses tend to be the same as the credits, that would mean 15 to 16 hours per week in class and 30 to 32 hours per week out-of-class is the nominal time.
However, actual workloads generally tend to be less (and have fallen since 1961), although courses with labs, art studio, music performance, computer programming, or big term projects may be higher workload. CS and engineering do tend to have a higher percentage of courses with labs or computer programming.
In math she got credit for both single and multivariable calculus, and last semester she took diff. eq. and linear algebra. The second CS class she is currently in is discrete math for CS majors. She still has statistics after that and maybe one more in the calculus series.
They do not have “normal” credits. On class is one credit. She has 5 and 1/2 (the physics lab).
She is in the 40 hours per week range for homework on non-test weeks, plus classes, recitation, and ECs. She is busy almost non-stop. Fortunately, she is an extraordinary student with a very long attention span. She is managing the load well, but I am a bit surprised at the amount of work. I asked her how a more typical student would get through this major. Her answer was, “They don’t.”
You are right about the programming. They have a significant programming assignment every week, that eats a lot of time, and she says that it can’t be done faster. I believe her.
My freshman DD is going through the same experience (In IE). She want’s A’s in all of her classes, and that requires a lot of studying (since she’s competing against a bunch of other bright students). The other factor, I think, is that she’s still learning how to effectively manager her time. For example, working with a study group cuts down on the amount of time (and head banging) that goes into working out your Calc 2 homework. She’s also took other steps, such as getting more sleep (sometimes not an easy thing to do in a freshman dorm), that make it easier to keep up with her homework and studies.
On average the workload sounds about right for getting the foundation of a technical program. The class with 15 hours may be a little high, but numbers in the general area of 3 hours of study for every 1 hour of classroom time was my own experience, and seems to be similar for kids I know in college now.
Keep in mind that she is not complaining or struggling. It is just worrying her parent (me) a bit. She, on the other hand, wants to take a 6th class next semester, and apply for a second major at the end of the year.
I am just hoping that the 40 hours of homework drops into the 30’s next semester, which would seem more manageable and allow her to establish a better academic and social balance. We will see.
While the price of college is ridiculous, they are definitely giving us our monies worth. That is for sure.
At the one course = one credit school, how many courses are needed to graduate (in general)?
If it is around 30 or 32 semester courses, or 45 to 48 quarter courses, that means that each course is like a 4 credit course under the common credit hour system, so each course should take about 12 hours per week of work total.
If it is around 40 semester courses, or 60 quarter courses, that means that each course is like a 3 credit course under the common credit hour system, so each course should take about 9 hours per week of work total.
It looks like it varies between 32 and 36 credits to graduate, depending on major in CAS. I can’t find a number for SEAS, but it must be at least 36.
That is another issue that I was not aware of before, CAS students often take 4 courses at a time, while Engineering students are typically taking 5 or 6 courses at a time. That makes a big difference in work load too.
Just wanted to say I can confirm 10-15 hours / week is about right. I’m pretty bad at time management and I’ve pulled my fair share of allnighters finishing CS projects. The concept of going a night without sleep seemed alien to my parents but normal for many CS majors. I’m a mech-e with a tech breadth in CS, and CS is more time consuming than any of my mechanical engineering classes. But I personally enjoy coding so it’s not like the workload is miserable
If the school is what I think it is, the engineering majors require 40 courses to graduate (this includes 3 free elective courses and 7 H/SS breadth courses), so the normal load is 5 courses per semester.
So this implies 45 to 60 total hours of work per week, depending on whether you assume that each course is equivalent to 3 credit hours or 4 credit hours at schools that use the credit hour system.
I think for getting good grades in engineering you should be putting in somewhere between 2 and 3 times the number of credit hours you are taking. This includes going to class.
For example,
If you take 15 credit hours it should take about 30 hours worth of work to get good grades and 45 hours would be reaching overkill. With 15 hours of classes, this evens out to about 15-30 hours of homework and studying per week.
@ucbalumnus Yes, you are correct. 40 credits to graduate. I found it.
@ucbalumnus “So this implies 45 to 60 total hours of work per week, depending on whether you assume that each course is equivalent to 3 credit hours or 4 credit hours at schools that use the credit hour system.”
Well, she is around 60 hours per week with class time, but 40 hours of homework it is definitely a lot higher than the 18 hours that that above article says is average for an engineering student.
It is interesting that people say that where you go to college does not really matter, but it seems that the expectations and level of homework required varies a great deal from school to school. I have to believe that they are learning something of value in the extra time that they are working on homework.
I would recommend that she NOT take on a second major. Concentrating on her one major and getting more depth in it is better than the second major. When an employer is looking to hire, he/she will always want the most well prepared candidate possible. A second major, unless the second major is interwoven with the first, will dilute her first major.
It struck me as I read through everyone’s comments - there are several folks here (myself among them) that, when asked, will say something along the lines of “all the ABET schools are good.” and “go to your large state program” The comments from many different directions acknowledging the effort required in an engineering program is significant brings some roundabout confirmation that the standards at all the schools really are pretty similar.
Engineering workload can be quite the shock. Part of the difficulty is the time management. Credits aren’t 1:1 with class hours. Right now I’m sitting at 17 credits for the term, but that is 23 hours of class a week due to labs.
17 units = 23 hours a week.
club activities = 15 hours a week (engineering club lead)
studying = 17-34 hours a week (recommended 1-2 hrs/credit hour)
Total: 55 - 72 hours a week of school related items. And then somehow find in time for adequate sleep, socializing, career development, relaxing, and eating.
The class hours can’t be changed and grades would take a toll if I dropped under 1hr/credit a week. Club work usually include 6+ hours during the week and Saturdays are build days of 7-8 hours. Even if I dropped all club stuff completely , which would be unwise, I would still be at 40 hours a week minimum on school work alone.
Can anybody else relate to this situation? Is this typical at other universities for engineering to be this many hours a week?
Since, in any major, 17 credits is supposed to mean 51 total hours per week spent on course work (including in-class and out-of-class time, but not including clubs and extracurriculars), you are probably within the reasonable expectation of workload associated with course work.
After all, you are supposed to be a full time student, and you are taking a slight overload (a “normal” course load is probably around 15 credits for what is supposed to be 45 hours per week of work).
Of course, actual workloads seem to have gone down over the years (probably because the internet has made a number of things more efficient, such as looking up references and such, and faster computers have made doing computer science software projects easier). If you have lots of lab courses, project courses, or those with computer programming assignments, you should expect a higher workload than if you have just lecture and discussion courses.