<p>UCSC is on the quarter system, so if you take three courses per quarter, you will take nine courses per year. If you take four courses per quarter, you will take twelve courses per year. It does seem that UCSC is generous with credit units (e.g. math courses that are 5 units at UCSC are 4 units at some other UCs), so you may be able to get away with taking four courses for 20 units instead of three courses for 15 units per quarter (but be prepared to drop one if the workload is too high).</p>
<p>If you have already taken the equivalent of college level math, couldn’t you start in a more advanced course?</p>
<p>Regarding “hippy dippy core class”, what do you mean?</p>