<p>Knowing that I have about two more semesters, not including this one, I went ahead and tried to figure out what I should be taking in the upcoming semesters. I discovered that, for some reason, I have a semester where I can take only 12 credits and still be fine, while the recommended schedule has a 15 credit courseload for each semester. Would adding an additional elective to this 12 credit courseload be beneficial in any way other than for the sake of learning?</p>
<p>I can see two possibilities, although there are probably more.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>If you plan to go on to graduate school, you might want to take an advanced course which would be good preparation. The same could be said for courses which might give you more specialization in an area that you wish to pursue as a career.</p></li>
<li><p>If you have an interest in other topics that you have not had a chance to develop during your engineering studies, then you might wish to consider them.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>If you find any other course of interest (particularly a unique or upper division course that is not available at any time at a community college), you might as well take it while you are attending your four year school.</p>
<p>If there are no other courses you really want to take, you may want to arrange your schedule so that your highest workload per credit courses are in the 12 credit semester.</p>
<p>If you can ace 15 credits, then fine, but since your senior electives are presumably in the areas that you want to work, taking 12 credits and getting As is better than taking 15 credits and getting Bs. That’s just my opinion.</p>
<p>Only if that course is relevant to either the graduate program you are interested in joining or is relevant to the types of topics that you would like to be working on for a career. Generally, companies and graduate school don’t give a wink about how many classes you took, including extra classes. They care about what you learned in those classes. If you can go into an interview and say “I took class X, which will really prepare me for this job because of Y reasons” then they will be quite happy.</p>