I am currently a freshman in second semester and I am taking 15 credits right now. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, my school is online and has extended the deadline to drop a class without a W on the transcript until late April. I am struggling in an intro CS (it’s very time consuming and stressful) and feel like I should have just taken a class in the artsci department instead as my major is not related to CS nor engineering at all. Would dropping CS (they wouldn’t see a W on the transcript) and having only 12 credits this semester be viewed as bad by ADCOMS as they would think I can’t handle a tough course-load? I had no problems with my last semester schedule which had 14 credits.
Drop the class if you are struggling. Plenty of students are going to have odd-looking transcripts from this term.
That said, having multiple semesters where you’re taking less than a full load of classes is going to raise doubts about your ability to handle the workload of med school.
Yeah I’m definitely going to take at least 15 credits for the rest of the semesters. I’ve been doing fine in my premed requirements and art sci classes this year and think it’s best for me to just stick to my major rather than “exploring” classes in the engineering school that are usually much harder.
Technically, if you want to take an engineering course and meet the prerequisites, you may register for the course. For premed students, these may be a GPA killer since the competition for grades is tougher and material covered may be harder. Stay away if you can.