<p>Is taking 25 credits in one semester possible?
I'm currently a senior in high school. I will graduate high school with 60 college credits, all general education courses.</p>
<p>I wasn't planning on going to college after this, but I have the opportunity to go for free at a good state university. I don't think I want to spend a whole two years completing a bachelors degree. I'm not really a college person.</p>
<p>I have mapped it out, if I were to take 25 credits for two semesters, and either take a few credits during break / summer I could complete 60 credits in one year. I would be majoring in communications.</p>
<p>How much more difficult is university than community college? I'm currently taking 18 credits, and don't have a problem. I honestly feel like I'm never doing enough work.</p>
<p>Will university be significantly harder? Do you think I could take 25 credits at once? (I also don't have to work while going to school, which I've usually done during high school.) </p>
<p>You haven’t mentioned what your major is, but there is a difference in the amount of work in upper level college courses and community college. 25 would be overwhelming. </p>
<p>good luck finding 25 credit hours you can register for in a semester that you need to take to graduate and whose hours don’t conflict with each other. That is, you need classes A and B to graduate and they’re offered at the same or overlapping times. You cannot change that. So, no, it’s very unlikely this can be done. Second, anything more than 15 or 18 hours you will pay for by the hour in addition to what you’re paying for the first 15 or 18. I have a student right now who is taking 15 hours and trying to make up work from 9 hours of incompletes from last semester and she is going out of her mind. Yesterday she remembered she had a midterm next class while she’s sitting in tutorial with me–a midterm for which she had yet to prepare. The number of courses is having a severe and negative impact on her learning. It’s nuts!</p>
<p>You would almost certainly need to petition to be allowed to take that many credits, and because your university doesn’t know how you handle its curriculum, they have no basis to say yes.</p>
<p>This is apart from my personal belief that the idea is nutz.</p>
<p>Don’t do it. If you are really desperate for some good reason to graduate early (that I can’t see in your post), you could see if you could work out a schedule that might allow you to graduate in 3 semesters. See if you can work out a potential schedule for that and go to classes for the first couple weeks. Decide before the official drop date if you think you can handle keeping all the classes you are registered for and get decent grades in them.</p>
<p>One thing to note is that internships/work experience is a pretty important part of getting a job with your degree. So if you are in summer school, you aren’t getting that experience. If your education is free, why not take the full two years? Look for a good internship between the two years you are there to build your resume. If you are just a high school senior, you are only going to be 20 when you graduate, and you are getting a degree that honestly doesn’t have the hottest job prospects. My advice is to take the full two years, and get as much as you can out of your coursework, networking with other students and professors, and from the on-campus career center as you can. Don’t consider your degree “just a piece of paper”. You are being offered something for free that can make a big difference in your earning power and quality of life in the long run. The degree alone isn’t such a great springboard if all you do is rush through your classes as fast as possible. You also likely will mature some in the next two years – which from your post seems like a good thing, I would be hesitant to hire someone who was so sure they didn’t really need a college degree and was only doing it because it was free. </p>
<p>inparent has given you excellent advice. Take the two years slowly, and fill up on internships and career-related part-time jobs on or off campus so that you have credible work experience to present a future employer. </p>
<p>Upper division courses at a good 4 year will be much more challenging than CC. Not to mention the scheduling wouldn’t work out. Challenge yourself to expand your knowledge and experience.</p>
<p>Anyone who’s familiar with Franco’s education background knows that he’s more of an exception to the rule. But I’ve heard of plenty of people at my alma mater taking 20-30 units in a QUARTER. The only requirement to do this at UCLA is to talk to a counselor to ensure you know what you’re getting into. While there will likely be class conflicts, you can always take independent studies, saturday, or online classes to complete the amount of units that you’d like.</p>
<p>Like the others, however, I don’t agree that this is advisable. You need to be a very special type of student to be capable of doing this, and you need to have excellent study skills and time management. It’s certainly possible that succeed, but it’s much more likely that you’ll fail, especially if you’re trying to balance your academics with work and a social life.</p>
<p>Plan for 18 credits your first semester. Upper-level classes (depending on where you go will require more work, more reading, more papers of a higher caliber… than community college gen ed classes (unless you go to a 4th tier university this will hold true accross the board, but the more selective your university, the bigger the difference. Some states have a very good CC system, such as California, but even there the gen ed classes aren’t as rigorous as the flagship’s, although they cover the same basic topics.)
Furthermore,even if you don’t have to work for money, as an upperclass student you’ll be expected to work for the experience. So budget at least 12 to 15 hours per week at an on-campus job related to your major OR a volunteer position related to your major, OR an off campus internship related to your major. You’ll have to get to know your professors, going to office hours to ask questions to go over material you may not understand or to ask them to go deeper into some aspect of the lecture, because you’ll need their recommendation and, if possible, work for them in research to learn how to conduct your own senior year (if they allow you).
It’s no longer about going to class/getting an A (that’s a necessary but not sufficient point).</p>