<p>Honestly, that’s a relatively easy schedule.</p>
<p>-CHEM 102/103: If you’ve taken high school chem of any kind, you will be fine. I took general chemistry my sophomore year of high school (not AP), and we didn’t cover anything that I didn’t already know until the last couple weeks of the course. Easy A for the lecture session. As for the lab, it looks like a lot on the schedule, but you only meet for three (?) hours every other week. For prep, you have to do a pre-lab “report” in your lab notebook, which normally consists of answering a bunch of questions and preparing tables for the lab. This only takes about two hours to do. The lab report itself has to be turned in at the end of the lab, so there is no outside work to be done on the lab other than the two-hour biweekly prep. Again, this should also be an easy A. They don’t grade you on accuracy, but rather your “lab skills”.</p>
<p>-MATH 231: I didn’t take Calc II here, but it can be a tough course, especially if you’re in one of the specially-marked “engineering” sections. In the end though, it’s a pretty standard math class that everyone has to take; this is just one of those things you have to do and get through it.</p>
<p>-PHYS 211: If you have any background knowledge in mechanics, this class is almost a guaranteed A. For the first half of the semester, you focus on standard kinetics and energetics (that is to say “standard mechanics”), then for the second half of the semester, you focus more on rotational dynamics, which can be very tricky when you’re getting started. That being said, there is a ridiculous amount of padding for the grades in PHYS 211/212. The grading policy can be found here: [Physics</a> 211 Course Description](<a href=“http://online.physics.uiuc.edu/courses/phys211/summer12/description_211_new.html]Physics”>http://online.physics.uiuc.edu/courses/phys211/summer12/description_211_new.html). As far as the lab goes, it is really a joke. Most labs consist of you rolling a ball down a slope or rolling a cart down a track with a spring, etc, and all you have to do are a few quantitative measurements. For this lab, you do have to meet every week, but the prelab only took me five to ten minutes per week, and you turn in your lab report at the end of the lab, so there is almost no outside time commitment.</p>
<p>I can’t speak for your ME class or ENG 101, but really, the rest of your schedule is pretty easy. From some of the other people who took the merit workshops, I was told that they were a lot more effort than they were worth. You essentially do an extra hour of problem sets over what the normal sections would do, and your TA doesn’t help beyond nudging your study groups in the right direction. I personally don’t think it is worth it. Taking “honors” classes (and I say “honors” because the merit workshop doesn’t count as honors on your transcript) only matters if you’re taking them specifically for your major, or if you’re taking them to fulfill a James Scholar/CHP requirement. There is no reason for you to put in the extra work for one credit hour. That, and college learning is completely different than high school learning in that you really need to learn how to budget your own time and figure out how much you personally need to devote to a specific subject, not go into your section routinely for an extra hour every time. It doesn’t teach you how to prioritize your studying–personal opinion.</p>
<p>Anyway, looks like a good schedule. You should do perfectly fine. </p>
<p>*For validation purposes, I’ll be a sophomore in the fall. First semester I took: MATH 241, PHYS 211, CHEM 102/103, MATH 199 (a gened), ENG 100, and ENG 199 (a one-credit class) for a total of 16 hours. Second semester, I took ECE 110, ECE 190, LING 199 (a gened), MATH 213, and PHYS 212, for a total of 18 hours. I have a 4.0 cumulative GPA, and I still go out on weekends, run, play video games, that whole deal. You just have to learn to prioritize and you’ll be fine with almost any schedule imo.</p>