<p>I am an international student. my MS in EE program begins in January.
I saw that schedule for almost all graduate schools assumes that student will take 3 courses per semester and that is a surprise for me. I assumed that number of courses per semester will be at least 4 or 5 and I am curious what is your opinion on this? is 3 courses too little or sufficient? I know this is the case in NYC area but am not sure about the rest of the country.</p>
<p>my uni offers an option of increasing the number of subjects per semester, but I am not sure how popular that is.</p>
<p>GT considers 4 to be full time, and it’s hell on top of research . I doubt you’d notice a difference in number of hours worked between three and four classes though.</p>
<p>Graduate classes are a lot more time-intensive and difficult than undergraduate courses. My program basically requires 4 classes a semester for 5 semester in order to graduate on time (there are 60 required credits), and it was very very stressful to do that on top of research. And I disagree that you would not notice the difference between 3 classes and 4. One semester I realized that my fourth “class” could be registered research credit in my secondary department, so I did that, and the difference in time required was quite large.</p>
<p>Many grad programs are 3 courses per semester because most grad students are also there as TA’s/GA’s/RA’s, which requires an extra time commitment. </p>
<p>If you are a TA, you will often attend the undergrad class (which obviously takes up an extra class slot), and will hold office and/or study session hours. That takes time.</p>
<p>If you are a Research Assistant, you will be spending a lot of time in a lab or other area doing research. That takes a lot of time.</p>
<p>Also, there are a lot of grad students have real jobs, so their schedule is jammed already.</p>
<p>There are many grad programs out there that don’t have funded positions, so you are probably free to try to up your credit hours per semester in that situation.</p>
<p>I also think it’s a misconception that all graduate classes are more time intensive and difficult than undergrad classes. I’m sure the “core” classes in grad school are more time intensive, but you can find many classes (electives and such) that aren’t any more time intensive than your typical undergrad upper division class.</p>
. I doubt you’d notice a difference in number of hours worked between three and four classes though.</p>