Taking 20+ Credit Hours - feasible?

Colleges and Universities A-Z Rice University
1

<p>Hi everyone,</p>

<p>as the title says, I am wondering how wise realistic it is to take 20+ credit hours in a term. This obviously depends on the type of courses, my intellect, my familiarity with the course material, instructor, and all other variables, but generally speaking, is this commonly done among Rice students?</p>

<p>and do they fare relatively well in terms of GPA?
I guess I am expecting anecdotes more than anything else as I doubt there's published data addressing my question</p>

<p>thanks in advance</p>

2

<p>It is possible.</p>

<p>I took 90 hours in my first 4 semesters at Rice, including a 9 class, 3 lab and 1 lpap semester. I ended up double stacking a few classes and not going to some at all. They don’t allow that anymore though. Basically, it is hard to do. I was taking Chemical Engineering/basic engineering courses, which weren’t too hard but had a lot of work. The other thing I realized is that I would do fine for the first half, then get kicked in the backside for the latter half of the semester, when the tests, projects and HW really ramp up.</p>

<p>In summary, don’t go in trying to take more than 20 and don’t shirk away from 20 either. Plan your schedule, and if there are courses you want to take and seem to be able to handle it, then give it a shot. Do not hesitate to drop classes.</p>

3

<p>so the impression I’m getting is 20 credit hrs is definitely doable. Just do not go over it? (which requires special permission anyhow, so it’s quite a hassle)</p>

4

<p>It is pretty easy to get permission. Basically, take as many hours as you want but

  1. Be ready and willing to drop classes
  2. Understand that it seems manageable but the workload increases significantly as the semester goes on
  3. Make sure you schedule in “extras” such as labs, problem sessions, office hours etc. They can tack on lots of extra hours.
  4. If the class has group projects, you will need availability to meet your group</p>
5

<p>As a Freshman, the answer to your question is: “It’s impossible”. Dean Hutchinson has a hard and fast policy (new this year) that 1st year Freshman may not have special permission (over 20 hour) requests approved. </p>

<p>The ONLY exception I have seen was for 21 for someone who needed it for ROTC. I requested 21 myself with 3 of those hours being a training course (not work intensive), and was flatly denied.</p>

<p>Edit: The exception referred to was to the unwritten Freshman rule. It’s not too hard to get an exception after your 2nd semester though.</p>

6

<p>In my opinion, it’s not usually a terribly wise decision. Now, granted, this depends a lot on what classes you take to make up those 20+ hours, but in my experience it’s usually a better idea to take fewer classes and learn more in each of them than to take too many classes and just kind of scrape by.</p>

7

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<p>Interesting. Dean Forman was much more lax about it. I took over 20 my second semester.</p>

8

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<p>Interesting. Dean Forman was much more lax about it. I took over 20 my second semester.</p>