Reply to simple question--Do college freshmen take 4 courses a semester or 5?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Depends on the school. At a lot of state schools, where a class is 3 credits, often 5, if they're not taking as many lab courses. At private schools on the semester system, it's often 4 (sometimes schools also limit how many credits first-semester freshman can take). [b]I'm actually really curious [/b]about the difference in semester courseloads at public and private schools - public schools often have way more requirements for the major and gen-eds - and graduates of state schools will end up taking a handful more classes than their private school counterparts.[/quote]

At our DC's private school you would need 5 (3 credit) courses per semester to be on target to graduate (less if someone had AP credit coming in).  They have to take at least 12 credits (4 courses) in a semester to be considered full time and can technically take up to 20 credits in a semester but special permission is required for 18 credits or above.  So - most kids take five 3 credit courses and some take an additional lower credit course (1 credit or 2 credit) -  these lower credit courses include things like the lab course that goes with your science course or a (non-lab) mini course that only meets an hour a week.

My private college (back in the day) was pretty much the same - although I think if you took 5 classes each semester, you could get away with only 4 courses the last semester.
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Similar at DD's LAC. Doing the math on credits to graduate, you'd need to average 15 credits per semester or 5 3-credit classes. For STEM majors taking a lot of classes with added 1-credit labs it's more like 4 classes. She came in with enough AP credit that she can just take 12 (which is the minimum to be full-time) and still be on track. So far, she's averaged 13-14 which has been 4 classes and playing in the orchestra (1 credit). [/quote]

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