<h1>You could self-study a course in two weeks without really changing your patterns that much… (note, I’m used to schools on the quarter schedule)</h1>
<p>10 weeks per quarter</p>
<p>5 classes per quarter</p>
<p>2 weeks/per class if you’re devoting full time and effort to a class.</p>
<p>(not to mention that you don’t need as much time - since there are transaction costs in switching between courses - not to mention that you don’t lose time to lectures that way). Note: Math/science lectures are often useless.</p>
<p>Even if you’re talking 4 classes per quarter, it’s still 2.5 weeks per class, which is interestingly short.</p>
<p>==
Now, with 52 weeks in a year, you could effectively study for 26 classes per year. Which is interesting in itself. Of course most people won’t be studying for that much, but - 10 weeks and that’s still 21 classes per year</p>
<p>I agree with the general ineffectiveness of lectures, but I think to self study a course requires a big change in your actual lifestyle and patterns during the time you’re taking it up. A friend of mine ran through Honors Precalculus over the summer in 2 weeks, and while I realize learning speeds vary from person to person, he was holed up in his room pretty much all day. I think he went a section a day (7-8 sections in a chapter) and reviewed over the weekend.</p>
<p>This is apparently the thinking behind the curriculum at Colorado College, which uses blocks of, I believe 3.5 weeks and the students take one course at a time. (It may be 2.5 weeks; I don’t recall exactly.)</p>
<p>It just doesn’t work. You retain more knowledge if you study a little bit at a time instead of cramming it all into a 2 week session. Yeah you may do well while you’re learning it what are are the chances that you’ll actually retain the material after the course?</p>
<p>And who’s to say your going to retain knowledge of 5 classes in one semester? I take my classes knowing that they are complete bs. You take what you can out of them but for the most part your there to make sure you pass that final. Doesn’t matter if it’s a course that spans over a couple of weeks or a full semester.</p>
<p>It’s also the reasoning behind the training camps for the Physics/Chemistry/Biology olympiads (which last for just as long).</p>
<p>And the reasoning behind the CTY summer camps</p>
<p>Even then, this reasoning could be applied to smaller periods of self-studying (for example, a couple of weeks over the summer for a course you really want to take or something)</p>
<p>Of course, spending 3 weeks solely on a course I detest wouldn’t be something I’d like to do (but then, one gets it over with quicker - so I guess the advantages/disadvantages of the plan would vary from person to person). It’s a plan that would probably work better for self-studying classes one enjoys.</p>
<p>It’s a bad idea, because life is about juggling and managing lots of stuff at once. You might be able to cram and later forget stuff for that high school level junk, but once you get to really difficult stuff where having a firm understanding of one concept is prerequisite to understanding the next concept, you’re going to want some time to digest and internalize ideas. I had one class that was so deep and intense that it was difficult to understand enough to do the homework, let alone have a solid understanding on the material.</p>