Any advice on if/when to take only three courses in a quarter? It appears a student could do that at least 6 quarters in their career (more depending on AP or other credit) and still meet the graduation requirements. And financial aid would be unaffected. Thoughts?
This is something that’s really variable depending on how much you can handle, what you want to do and what you want out of college. I’ve taken at least four classes every quarter here and I don’t plan on ever taking three.
A lot of people recommend taking three courses your first quarter, four courses your second quarter, and then deciding for yourself later. You might want to take three courses when you’re taking harder classes, or when you just finished a brutal quarter and want to relax for a few months. This is really something you’ll figure out with experience.
I think taking only three courses your first quarter isn’t such a bad idea - but I’m hesitant to recommend it to everyone. There were four classes I really wanted to take and I’m glad I took them all. Because I’ve been choosing four classes every quarter so far, I have a lot of freedom in where to go from now on. And I think being thrown into the deep end was good for my study habits, I was forced to develop them because my only alternative was to be totally overwhelmed.
So really, it’s a personal decision. This isn’t something worth agonizing over now - during o-week you’ll talk to your advisor, and you’ll have your o-aides, your RAs, and whoever happens to also be around to ask for advice.
sound advice.
DD attended a mediocre HS where she rarely had homework, and what little she had was never challenging. So she/ never developed, nor needed, good study habits. As she/we were concerned about this, she took 3 classes first quarter and that was a good decision. She didn’t get behind, got used to the rhythm of the Quarter and the workload. She has taken 4 classes over winter/spring and has been handling it fine and will probably take 4 most quarters.
She did have a housemate, very bright and used to working hard, who complained about being bored with only 3 classes.
One of my kids took four courses every quarter except her last winter quarter, when she was writing her honors thesis; the other took three courses twice, once for his honors thesis and once because he had two difficult lab sciences (and that time he got bored, and wished he were taking another course).
My impression is that relatively few students graduate with the minimum number of courses (42), and that lots have 45-48 (48 being the maximum courseload for four full academic years). The people who come to the University of Chicago tend to be people who really want to take classes there. That doesn’t mean you have to take four classes your first quarter – but if you don’t, you will probably be stuck with Core Hum, math, and some science into course or intro economics. You may want to explore something else that interests you.
Remember that three and four classes cost the same amount. Lots of students see taking three as a waste of money - hardly any do it more than a couple of quarters in their time here unless they struggle academically
When is course selection? During O-Week?
I believe official registration will take place during O-Week, but there is something called “pre-registration”. It sounds like, pre-registration will assign classes before you get to Chicago, and any problems/issues are handled with the advisor during O-Week. Not 100% sure though.
“You may pre-register for Autumn courses anytime between Monday, August 7, 2017 at 9:00am and Friday, August 18, 2017 at 5:00pm.”
“Once you make your Pre-Registration requests, the algorithms in our registration system will attempt to maximize your top course choices based on available seats, creating a schedule for all incoming students. You’ll receive your schedule one week before you arrive on campus. Once you are here, your Academic Adviser will meet with you to discuss your courses and any questions you might have.”
https://orientation.uchicago.edu/page/pre-registration-autumn-courses
^^That’s a new system. Last September, first and only registration was done during O-week. There were several sessions for kids to familiarize themselves with the requirements etc, receive results of their placement tests, and then meet with their advisor and sign up for classes in the second half of the week.
If you are taking Honors Analysis, think about taking 3 classes seriously.
College is a big transition. I think it’s wise to start with only 3 so that you can really start off strong and avoid burnout.
Does anyone ‘keep up’ by taking a course or two in the summer? My D17 has mentioned this to me as an option. Especially if she has a job or internship in Chicago, she might be able to remain in HP and take a class. Someone (@HydeSnark?) posted on another thread that not many do this but we were thinking she could get her FL requirement out of the way by taking in the summer. She won’t be coming in with FL AP.
@JBStillFlying I am fairly certain that foreign languages are not offered over the summer. You should double check at https://summer.uchicago.edu
There is a language intensive study abroad to China, but you need some prior knowledge of Chinese. https://summer.uchicago.edu/uchicago-students/chicago-in-beijing
@Shrmpngrtz - does Summer Language Institute not count for credit? I had found this website and current UChicago students are eligible to register, but haven’t looked into it in more detail:
https://summerlanguages.uchicago.edu
Edit/Update: Actually, it DOES sound like current students can use this option to gain their FL credits (?): https://summerlanguages.uchicago.edu/page/sli-students
@JBStillFlying I stand corrected - you are right. I was only looking at the Chicago summer sessions site. Why wouldn’t Chicago link the Summer Sessions and Summer Language Institute sites? Strange. But thanks for updating.
@Shrmpngrtz it looks like they’ve broken out the FL offerings and expanded into a program that fits the needs of several groups. It’s not well advertised and google is probably a better way to run across it than by looking at the summer courses on the UChicago website.
D17, having very little facility with Romance languages even after several years of French, Spanish, and Latin, is determined to take German. We’ll see how that goes!
“Lots of students see taking three as a waste of money”
My kid has this attitude and I think it’s really wrong-headed (unless you’re in a situation where taking 3 will mean you can’t graduate in 4 years/12 quarters). You learn more/better if you have adequate time to do your work and aren’t constantly stressed and triaging/satisficing. If you can take four courses without putting yourself in that situation, cool – go for it. But there are four course loads that are really suboptimal from a learning standpoint, even if you can maintain a good GPA while taking them. I guess my bottom line is that the student who learned the most isn’t necessarily the student with the most courses on his/her transcript. I think the current HS/college admissions environment has left lots of kids with a “more is better” attitude that tends to turn education into an exercise in workload management.
@JBStillFlying DD has a friend who will be taking a core science lass at another highly regarded private Chicago area U this summer. She is a premed, does not care for the subject, and apparently thinks it will be easier enough to justify the not cheap extra tuition.
Otherwise, at least back in the old days, no one I knew went to summer school. There’s enough extra room in the curriculum that it was uncommon to not have enough room for desired/needed coursework. And that was before they trimmed the Core down some.
Also regarding language, DD who only had HS language (no honors or AP) placed into 2nd Q of 2nd year. I think it’s not uncommon for kids with no AP to do relatively well on the placement test. Only had to take 1 quarter of 2nd year to fill her requirement. Full disclosure: she did attend Concordia Language Village 2 week session for 2 years early in HS and was best student (out of all 5 that were taking French 4) in her HS :D.
@IHS76 did she take that in MN? We’ve always had one kid or two who wanted to do that program (Concordia) but for whatever reason it didn’t work out.
I actually did summer school back in the day in order to get all my required courses out of the way before my senior thesis in the fall. I had spent spring of Junior year doing electives in a study abroad so missed a crucial course. Sure, I could have taken spring of my senior year but I figured that didn’t make any sense, given that I was pretty much done with my major and waiting on grad school decisions by that point! Took the required course at the local state U and the credit transferred just fine. In my personal case, the instructor was top-notch.
We’ve known quite a few who took summer school prior to beginning engineering or other rigorous programs, just in order to get certain prereqs out of the way before beginning some sequence or other. So it’s probably not as unusual as it was 30 years ago. In the case of D17’s foreign language, she loathes French (mystery to me - I took it all through HS and 2 1/2 years in college) and really desires to learn a completely different language. She is in no hurry to waive entry-level courses at UChicago and very much looking forward to an entirely new educational experience.
My experience with language:
My son had five years of Latin through IB(SL)/AP (Virgil) (taught as one combined class); I think he got a 5 on the IB test. That didn’t give him enough to place out of the language requirement in Latin. The placement test consisted of three short paragraphs to translate – maybe 15 lines total. One was completely easy; the next was reasonably hard; and the third was beyond anything he had ever seen. One quarter, two quarters, three quarters. My daughter, who got a 3 on the French Language AP, and knew far less French than her brother knew Latin, placed out of the language requirement (but had to take more French, anyway, for her major).
He really didn’t want to take any more Latin, and wound up taking a summer course that was triple-credit Arabic – 5 hours/day, 5 days/week. It satisfied his language requirement. As far as I was concerned, it was an educational disaster. (1) He (and pretty much all of his classmates) burned out on the class a few weeks before the end. It was really hard to maintain the level of focus and commitment needed during the summer. (2) I strongly believe that the first year of a foreign language, even at the college level, gives you nothing worthwhile (unless it’s a course for people who are already polyglots). I said I would pay for the summer course only if he committed to take a second year of Arabic the immediately following academic year. But it became clear by the end of the first week of Arabic II that the summer Arabic I course had only covered about 75% of what the normal 3-quarter Arabic I sequence covered. There was no way he was going to be able to catch up for Arabic II.