<p>I was wondering what the general level of stress on campus is, for example in terms of student competition and pressure students put on themselves? Also, what is the average number of classes students take each semester and number of hours spent on homework/studying each day?</p>
<p>This depends on your major, if you’re engineering or science youre going to work harder than business. Notre Dame is not a cutthroat place, but people do take their classes seriously. Classes and hours studying are a personal choice, and depend largely on your major as well.</p>
<p>Agree completely with jsmithers. It depends on your major as well as what you decide to make of it. I’m majoring in honors mathematics, which results in a lot of late nights for me and my math buddies, for example. That being said, we all help each other out with our homework and studying, so it’s anything but a cutthroat environment. There’s a lot of competition, but it all depends on how you do as an individual. I’ve heard of teachers giving almost their entire classes A’s because the average was that high.</p>
<p>As far as average classes goes, I’d say probably 5 or so a semester (usually equates to 16ish credit hours) is the norm. Number of hours spent on homework varies by the day/week. Some weeks tend to be pretty easy workwise, whereas sometimes tougher weeks occasionally pop up where you’ll have a fair amount to do.</p>
<p>The difference between ND and say, Ivy League schools or other high caliber schools is that the students are not negatively competitive. I’ve heard some horror stories of the level of competition among students at some other schools and ND couldn’t be farther from that. It’s sort of the family feel that you have here, so we tend to rather help each other out than bring each other down.</p>