<p>So...how bad is it? Are you locked in your room all the time doing work?</p>
<p>it depends on the classes you take</p>
<p>^agree with nngmm. There are a lot of factors. are you taking a light workload or a heavy one? what are you majoring in? what grades are you aiming for? </p>
<p>I'd say that unless you're taking a really tough workload you're not going to be studying all the time. It can though take a large chunk of your time.</p>
<p>Completely depends on majors and classes. What are you thinking of majoring in?</p>
<p>The people I've lived with have had time to relax and have fun - they might go to dinner, watch movies, go to parties, take a trip to San Francisco, go on a dorm trip... I don't think I've known anyone who studies "all the time", but the workload does vary by classes.</p>
<p>The average Stanford student studies about 40 hours a week, which includes classes, homework, essays, and studying for exams. (This figure is based on an assignment in the Sleep and Dreams class where students were supposed to record how they spent their time for a week... it might be a bit skewed since students who knew they had less time to study a given quarter are more likely to take the class, and the class is worth 3 units and very little work... but 40 hours is probably a reasonable estimate) It does vary by classes and major though. I don't think I know any physics majors, for example, who spent less than 40 hours a week between classes and studying.</p>
<p>What about the anthropology major?</p>
<p>bumpbumpbump</p>
<p>The average Stanford student studies about 40 hours a week, which includes classes, *homework, essays, and studying for exams.* </p>
<p>That's not too bad, I think. I mean, if that really does include class time as well, it's more like 30 hours a week of outside work. So 30/7 is roughly 4.3 hours. Hhmmm, now that I think about it again, 4.3 hours a day, every day can get a bit tiresome. But I guess it's made better by the fact that (hopefully) classes at Stanford will actually be interesting and fun to learn about and my assignments will actually be meaningful, not tedious busywork (again, hopefully...)</p>
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[quote]
That's not too bad, I think. I mean, if that really does include class time as well, it's more like 30 hours a week of outside work. So 30/7 is roughly 4.3 hours. Hhmmm, now that I think about it again, 4.3 hours a day, every day can get a bit tiresome. But I guess it's made better by the fact that (hopefully) classes at Stanford will actually be interesting and fun to learn about and my assignments will actually be meaningful, not tedious busywork (again, hopefully...)
[/quote]
</p>
<p>hehe well, you're one lucky duck if you're only in class 10 hours a week! It's more like 15 for the average student. And, don't get your hopes up, at least as a freshman =) Though really, the workload isn't really that much. I thought about it and I came to the conclusion that while it's legitimately possible I spend close to or slightly more than 40 hours a week, I have so much time on my hands still. So yea.</p>
<p>The average Stanford student studies about 40 hours a week, which includes classes, homework, essays, and studying for exams.</p>
<p>As an alumni from the late 90s and I can shed some light on this - it REALLY does depend on your major. I know certain things are different now but when I started, Econ was 60 units with a typical class being 5 units. I was IE and it was 137 units! Most upper divi classes were more like 3 units. Trust me, it varies. Don't go by averages as while it may actually be the average, it almost certainly won't apply to you.</p>
<p>Study hard but don't forget flicks, your dorm ski trips, full moon, big game ... oh the memories.</p>
<p>If you're dead set on arriving at some average number of hours you're going to be working, don't think of it as X number of hours per day distributed uniformly across the week. While the average number of hours/week of work may not be the same across all students, what I have seen to be pretty universal is that the work comes in waves. This seems to be more a by-product of the quarter system than anything else.</p>
<p>wow, i get 5 hours of hw from school alone.</p>
<p>The rule of thumb I’ve been told (from a seasoned professor) is to take the number of units a class is and multiply it by 3 to get the total number of hours per week you should be working on a class: lectures, lab/section, reading, assignments, studying and reviewing. So if a ‘normal’ course load is 15 units, that’s about 45 hours. Of course, students usually shirk at least a little, so 40 hours seems reasonable. It’s also the equivalent of a full-time job, which I think makes sense as well.</p>
<p>I’m not a college student, but I want to chime in. Ignore me if you’d like.</p>
<p>If you really do spend fifty or so hours per week studying - more than this magic “forty” number - it’s not set up the same way as high school. So, that huge eight hour chunk of wasted time in the middle of your day is gone. Instead, you’re going to be spending those eight or so hours in class and managing your time (depending on your work ethic and what you need to accomplish, you could use it studying). Forty hours a week is only, say, nine to five - that’s a lot of open time every day, and that’s not even distributing the work to the weekends. So if you ramp it up to fifty but include the weekends (Sunday at least!), it doesn’t seem like as much time.</p>
<p>On CC especially, there are a lot of students who go to school for eight hours and then spend four hours doing homework after that, and then probably six hours on the weekends. That’s 86 hours right there - almost double the “average” figure. Of course, it’s all in the scheduling, but the more I think about it, the more free time there is. It all depends on the load you take and your time management skills.</p>
<p>You will probably never spend more than 4 hours a day in class. The trick is to schedule your classes in the mornings so that you avoid waking up at 11 having wasted half a day. Like applicannot said, you have enormous amounts of “free time”. It’s not about how much homework or how many classes you take but more so how good your time management skills are.</p>
<p>My strategy has been to schedule all my classes in the afternoon. That way I can always sleep in. I’m typically up late with friends, so there’s no wasted time. I do my work in the evenings–it all works out.</p>