<p>Hi all,</p>
<p>I am a prospective student interested in Swarthmore. I was doing research on Swarthmore's website and was reading the courses requirement page, and i stumbled upon the term "20-course rule". </p>
<p>When I read in context, it appears to be a rule of sort to limit the number of courses a student can take. I googled and searched this forum but was unable to find any info about it. </p>
<p>Was wondering if someone familiar with it could explain.</p>
<p>I’ve never heard of the “20-course rule.” It probably refers to the distribution requirement that you have to complete at least 20 credits outside of one major department before graduation, which is pretty easy to accomplish, because people take 4 credits per semester on average.</p>
<p>Yep, the 20-course rule is as dchow said - you need to take 20 credits outside of your major (or one of your majors). With requirements, and other courses you’re just interested in, I don’t think many people have trouble with this. You shouldn’t have more than 12 credits required of you within your major anyway, and since you need 32 to graduate, that fits in pretty well. :] You can take as many courses as you want (within reason, obviously) - it just needs to be 20 credits + the ones in your major.</p>
<p>A standard course-load at Swarthmore is four courses per semester times eight semesters, for a total of 32 courses to graduate.</p>
<p>At least 20 of these courses must be outside of your major. That would leave as many as 12 courses in your major – one per semester for eight semesters, two per semester for eight semesters. That’s a lot of courses in your major. Few Swatties do that as there are so many interesting and/or related courses in so many departments. So, the 20 course rule is basically a non-issue.</p>
<p>Technically, there is a limit of five courses per semester before you have to start jumping through hoops to get permission, that’s a total of 40 courses over four years. As a practical matter, five courses per semester is a lot, especially if one of them is a lab science or language or music or studio art that requires a lot of extra hours. Few Swatties, even the hard core braniacs, do that every semester. I’ve never heard of anyone wanting to take six courses in a semester. That would be an insane workload. There are easier ways to take on a heavy workload – like honors seminars.</p>
<p>Thanks for the reply. I am definitely much more informed now. </p>
<p>Just a related question, now that interesteddad had mentioned about taking additional courses. Does Swarthmore allow students to take a class and sit at the back of the lecture hall, with the sole intention of learning for learning sake, without taking any credit for the attendance?</p>
<p>Swarthmore allows auditing, where one is registered as an audit and attends classes but does not get credit. Some professors allow auditing, while others don’t, and each prof has their own requirements (ie., a typical requirement for a non-lecture class would be that an auditor does all the reading, but perhaps none of the writing assignments). This shows up on the transcript as an audit, without a grade. </p>
<p>Some professors will also allow unofficial audits, where you just come sit in. In the largest lecture courses, they probably wouldn’t even notice. In some classes, though, like seminars, professors might not permit auditors. </p>
<p>There is also the option of taking a class pass-fail, up to four times after the first semester, which is another low-stress way to participate in a class “just for learning”. </p>
<p>Generally, few students will audit–if they have the time, they might as well just take the class for real and get the credit.</p>
<p>etselec, </p>
<p>Thanks for yr reply. That’s very enlightening. Will definitely look into “auditing” at Swarthmore if I am accepted to the college eventually.</p>