Why the heck is everybody here pre-business? lol. And no, it is not luck that your classes (despite 19 hours) don’t take up that much time (even business schools are known for low workloads at most colleges, but Emory’s is a bit above average as are the other top b-schools). The business school’s pre-reqs are not that challenging to accommodate and don’t involve many particularly rigorous courses (http://goizueta.emory.edu/degree/undergraduate/admissions/academic_requirements.html : I mean, a normal college student in other major would likely end up taking most of these classes for fun or as major requirements minus the ones hosted by the b-school. By time many ECAS people hit sophomore year, they may have already started important intermediate, advanced, or special topics courses in their field of interest while pre-nursing and pre-bus. students are still fullfilling pre-reqs and mixing it in with easy GER courses). T
The b-school doesn’t require students to challenge themselves (nor particularly encourages it. They define “rigor” by the amount of hours more so than the actual nature of the courses (they “think” they are enhancing rigor by encouraging a CWR in a humanities but they aren’t. Perhaps they should encourage calc. 2 and/or higher level math instead if they want a more prepared group of incoming students) and it shows as their entering GPA is like a mean of 3.6 (or higher), a bit higher than the average of an Emory student by then (end of sophomore year). Most students would have had to face more “bullets” by then course work wise. Again, not representative if outside of pre-business. But regardless, Emory’s workload in general for most students is not abnormally low or high for an elite school. Many classes that require more effort are moreso known for difficult exams more so than anything else (so you just have to study more frequently, as in not right before the exam…maybe like a week or 2). These classes don’t attempt to drown students in graded work so much as set the bar really high to let students know how deeply they should study and engage the material independently. I would say that for many majors or tracks, 19 hours could end up quite challenging, like if one was pre-health or was doing some major and QSS combo.