<p>A few years back, Berkeley changed from quarter to semester, bcos, as some students and professors said at the time: you cant' afford to get sick, bcos if you do you will be behind big time. Under a quarter system, Berkeley required 180 units to graduate. A 'normal' schedule was 15 units (ignoring summer school) to graduate in four years. Since most classes were 4-5 units, kids took 3-4 classes each quarter. Under the semester system, the graduation requirement is now 120 units. With the change, fall classes started earlier so finals occur before the holidays.</p>
<p>While you could take 15 credit-hours per semester (and while I plan to), every school I considered applying to required 30-32 courses to graduate, excluding engineering, and taking 15 credit-hours was considered overloading.</p>
<p>That said, a friend of mine at UMass-Amherst said something to the effect that taking 15 credit-hours per semester there was more common. What school did you go to? It may be that different schools have different standards.</p>
<p>15 units/semester x 8 semesters = 120 semeseter units = pretty standard for graduation.</p>
<p>180 quarter units is pretty standard too.</p>
<p>I guess I'm just used to how private colleges in New England (at least the ones I was applying to) do it. All of the ones I looked at, even BU, only required 32 courses total, i.e. 96 semester units. Public universities seem to all require 120 units, though. What about private schools in other parts of the country?</p>
<p>Ah...PT, there's a difference: many schools, including my D's Northeast LAC, have the typical course count for 4 units, not 3. Engineering classes and science lab courses often get the shaft in terms of # of credits for amount of work.</p>
<p>4 x 32 = 128...similar ballpark.</p>
<p>Interesting discussion. I checked my transcript. (I graduated mid-70s). My school had a semester system. I majored in engineering, took 47 courses, and earned 137 credit hours. </p>
<p>Thinking perhaps things had changed, I checked the current graduation requirements for the course I took. They are almost the same, although students no longer take courses in slide rules.</p>
<p>I’ve gone to both semester and quarter schools! 4 Universities total. My advice is this… Go to a term school for your first two years to get unimportant classes out of way… but … for junior and senior or graduate work go to a semester school!!</p>
<p>You do not want to be rushed through classes you love at a very fast pace not having a chance to absorb the material properly if you love you major. At term schools you feel like you are all just taking survey classes, no chance to go into real depth. I love “semester” schools over term after being put through both. </p>
<p>I strongly disagree with 2nd comment of chelsea …it is very easy to transfer credits from a semester school to a term school and opposite. You will not loose and credits unless it’s a terrible school with lazy admissions department.</p>