<p>I am an AEM major and I have 29 AP credits, which means that I could take the minimum of 12 credits every semester and still complete more than 120 credits. But is that ever done? Is my thinking correct? I just want to make sure before I go ahead and only take 12 the first semester.</p>
<p>It's something you can do but not very sound strategy.</p>
<p>First of all, you pay the same amount no matter how many credits you take so you're really cheating yourself out of an education if you take the bare minimum every semester.</p>
<p>Secondly, if you only sign up with the intention of taking 12 credits a semester, what happens if you need to drop a class? That would cause you to drop below the minimum.</p>
<p>12-13 credits is fine for the first couple of semesters but you really should be doing 15-16 credits/semester the rest of the way.</p>
<p>It's a bad idea to take 12 credits in general. This means you CAN'T drop/fail a class. If you take a 4th/5th full class, you'll have something to fall back on if one of your courses goes badly, which it easily can. The administration is more forgiving your first semester or two, but in general it's a good idea to take more than 12 credits.</p>
<p>For my first year at least, I'm going to be taking only courses that are required for graduation so dropping wouldn't be an option. It doesn't seem worth it to do of all that work for an extra class just for the extremely small, maybe non existant chance that I ever fail a class.</p>
<p>Why wouldn't you want to take advantage of all of the opportunities to learn at Cornell? Take a class outside of what is required, at least. Take classes to expand your horizons, because being well rounded will certainly help you in any business career. You'll be missing out on a big part of the Cornell experience if you don't spread your wings a bit while you're there.</p>
<p>Maybe you can use those credits to work on a concentration...that would seem like a great opportunity.</p>
<p>I cam to Cornell in a very similar position and considered taking a similar path as the one that yoyu are thinking about. Taking 12 credits to start off is a very good idea in order to get used to the work load since you have the opprotunity to do so. But as you go on you are probably going to find that you will want to take 15 credits. Cornell has alot of interesting areas to explore and by filling your requirements quickly you will have alot more time to direct the rest of you education into fields that interest you. If you do 12 credits, fulffilling those requirements and getting to the "fun" stuff will take alot longer. Not to mention, you may decide that you want to graduate a semester or two early and go do something else (which is a popular option). Besides, if you have 29 AP credits you had to be a pretty ambitious student in high school. So taking 12 credits in college will probably bore you to death.</p>