<p>I’m taking 17 credits but commute for 3 hours daily.</p>
<p>I am thinking about withdrawing from a class but not because I expect a poor grade but because I need to do well in all my classes. I am worried how bad a W will look on my application for nursing school…</p>
<p>The basic rule is three-credit hours for every in-class hour.</p>
<p>Do you have breaks in between classes? How do you commute- public transportation or do you drive yourself? If you have plenty of breaks and/or take a bus or train, you should have plenty of time to study.</p>
<p>I use public transportation and don’t have much break between classes as I’m taking 2 3-hour labs.</p>
<p>I believe I’ve heard before (but not sure) that every credit hour should require 4 hours of studying outside of class…?</p>
<p>Typically you should allow 1-2 hours per credit hour. If it’s something you’re having a really hard time with, you should definitely be giving yourself more. For most classes, however, an hour should be enough (it is for me, anyway).</p>
<p>The rules of thumb are just that; guides but not hard and fast rules. They are more a tool used to explain to HS students what to expect in college, or to help a college student that is not doing too well understand the time commitment they need to make. However I’m guessing by now you already have a semester under your belt in college and you understand what it takes. Rules of thumb are at this point irrelevant to you.</p>
<p>Your question really seems to be more about the effect of the W on your application. You are probably better off getting a W in a class and keeping a strong GPA then and keeping the class and dragging the GPA down. </p>
<p>BTW since you are interested in nursing you should take a look at the application procedures for nursing programs. At many colleges you can download the whole application package just to look it over. The reason I point this out is there are several things you can be doing now to strengthen your application. Most of them will ask for letters of reference, so you should be making a point to get to know some of your profs. And often they weigh heavily whether you have any prior exposure to the field, so that is something you can be getting now from a job or through volunteer work. The point I’m making is you don’t want to be filling out the application down the road and realize there were things you could have done to be a stronger applicant, but that at the point you are applying it is too late to do.</p>
<p>It’s never too early to start preparing. I suggest you visit the career center at your school to see what they can do to help. Also you can find many books about nursing careers that can help you understand the process of entering the field. Early exposure is a real key. You don’t want to end up like a teacher I had in high school that started her career by earning a nursing degree only to find out she didn’t actually like being around sick people!</p>
<p>When I was in college, the nominal expectation was 3 hours of work per week per credit hour unit, including both in-class time and out-of-class time. However, some courses were considerably more or less work than that (lab courses and those with large term projects tended to be the higher work per credit hour unit courses).</p>
<p>However, studies have found that workloads have gone down over the years, probably down to 2 to 2.5 hours of work per week per credit hour unit. This may be due to technology improvements (for example, it is far quicker and easier to search for references on the web from your computer or phone than to go to the library and look through card catalogs, then look through each book (which may be in a different library) to see if it really has what you are looking for).</p>