Things to Consider When Planning for Courses

During college, you have to be mature enough to be able to take certain decisions. There will come some points and situations when nobody would be there to guide or advice you so you have to be  prepared to take crucial decisions by analyzing things by yourself.One of the most important decisions you have to take in college is regarding course enrollment that has to be done at the start of each semester. Each semester, you  study a combination of core and elective courses at college. Most colleges offer flexibility to students in course selection so that they can explore several areas of study while others force enroll them in the course that the college believe they must study. In my time, we had the opportunity to choose our courses according to our own will and interest so I used to plan them carefully even if I had to write my essay or assignment that was due urgently. This is because courses are something you need to prioritize like how many courses to take, which ones and from which instructor. Following are some things to consider when you are planning for next semester’s courses: Total credit hours you need to complete: Each course consist of a specific number of credit hours usually ranging from two to four. However, one and zero credit hour courses are also available. You have to analyze how many credit hours you need to complete in the current year to be able to graduate on time. Some students adopt a strategy in which they take extra workload in the first four or five semesters and focus more on corporate internships and thesis in final semesters.To adopt this strategy, you need to take extra credit hours in some semesters but if you do so, make sure some courses are easy to study so that you do not get overburdened resulting in a poor grade point average. Completing the core and major elective requirements: College courses are usually divided into university cores, major cores, major electives and free electives so you need to thoroughly study the handbook in order to know the graduating requirements. In some cases, students just keep on enrolling in courses they like ignoring the graduation requirements which they eventually realize in the last semester. That becomes too late because if you fail to get a place in that course for the semester, your graduation can get delayed.So try completing the major requirements before you move on to study other courses that you are interested in. Difficulty level and workload of all the courses planned: There are some courses in which workload is high and you need to spend a lot of time on their assignments, projects and presentations. Make sure you do not end up enrolling in a lot of such courses because the workload gets unmanageable and your performance in all courses will decline. So instead of getting a poor grade point average in the semester by taking such a course combination, keep some courses for future semesters by replacing them with easier ones available.You can always talk to your seniors or batch mates to have an idea about the workload of each course but never listen to the one who has not experienced it by himself.