How many courses do you recommend people to take each semester?
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hello friend,
five courses a semester is considered the average number– it’s how many you need to be taking to graduate in four years, if you don’t plan on taking any summer school.
big thanks to the university of utah for this snazzy gif that only reads in my head as sarcastic. suMMer sCHOol, oh! yeah! i love attending class in 30-degree heat while my friends upload instastories from asia and europe. this is my idea of a good time.
real talk, though– what i would really recommend is that you take things at your own pace. the adjustment from high school to university (if i can make that assumption, given your question) can be rough in different ways. i mean, not for everyone– we get it, jim, you’re taking six courses and pasted your 99 in bio to your dorm room wall. and while we all know a jim, we’re not all jim. jim will probably burn out anyway.
as far as fall/winter is concerned, you’ll need three courses to qualify as a full-time student, and you can take up to a maximum of six without special permission. i haven’t met anyone yet on three– the most common loads are four, five, and six.
tl:dr, your options for a full-time sem of fall/winter study (and what kind of first year/carb they make you) are:
option 1! four courses
you know your limit and you play within it. or maybe you just took one of the few APs u of t actually accepts and want to ease things off after an anxiety- and caffeine-fueled high school career. either way, you’re not looking to bring anyone down; you just wanna look after yourself and get things done without crying too much.
if you were a carb, you’d probably be brown rice. healthy and quite wholesome.
option 2! five courses
you’re a go-with-the flow kinda kid. you probably went to university because everyone else was doing it too, or because your parents told you to. you don’t know what you want to do with your degree yet, or even what POSt you want. what’s a POSt? post… what? post-degree, you’re headed for a standard nine-to-five with an hour-long lunch break where all your coworkers talk about their kids and the weather.
you, my friend, are a slice of bread. pretty standard. not too interesting. good with peanut butter.
option 3! six courses
you like to live life on the edge– of sanity? of a robarts study carrel at 3 in the morning? no one else is really sure. you’re highkey headed somewhere, whether that’s absolute greatness or the deep dark pits of study burnout. maybe you’re crazy. maybe you just have a better work ethic than the rest of us. maybe she’s born with it. maybe it’s maybelline.
your designated carbohydrate is kraft dinner mac and cheese. can’t be eaten for too many years in a row without doing some kinda damage to your body. a lil concerning. but pretty dang amazing in the moment.
obviously, take ’em with a grain of salt. i’m no buzzfeed quiz.
regardless of which option you choose, it might be useful to know the uni will probably charge you the same tuition. that is, if you’re in artsci– if you’re not, i would encourage you to look into your fees. just to show you what i mean, last year a first-year domestic student in innis college paid a flat program fee of $6,780 whether their courseload was four, five, or six. once they dropped below an average of four per semester, they’d pay per course.
so, purely financially speaking, you kinda get more worth outta things if you’re taking a load of five or six courses. especially since, if you’re only taking four at a time, you’ll have to take summers, extra semesters, or even an extra year to finish your degree.
like i said, though– if you have the resources to do so, take your time. i know plenty of really smart people who plan to stay an extra year or sem. don’t feel too much pressure to do things the “normal” way. remember that you can always register for five and drop down later, if things get to be too much.
be Boundless,
aska