Harvard Extension School

Parents Forum
1

<p>My child is was in her second year at MIT when she decided that she wanted to take a semester off of school to work. However, she still wants to continue to take some courses while she works, and has looked into HES. </p>

<p>She will be taking three courses over the Spring 2014 period (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday), along with 20-25 hours of work every week. </p>

<p>Does this seem like too much? Does the workload from HES demand too much time that she may have to reduce the number of courses?
She expects to do well - but the last thing that I want is for her to feel overworked during her time off from MIT. </p>

<p>Thanks!!</p>

2

<p>I think 3 classes is too much, though I don’t know how many ppers and tests and readings each involves. If each one takes 8-10 hours a week, plus the job, sounds like overkill.</p>

3

<p>Thank you so much! Sometimes, I swear, my child thinks she can do anything -</p>

4

<p>Many moons ago, I took some courses at HES while working full time. 2 classes was definitely extremely challenging with a full time job, at least if you wanted to have any kind of a social life. Basically, most evenings were taken up with attending class, leaving one almost no time to study. With a half time job it could work out. But it would hardly qualify as a semester “off.” Partly it depends on what classes we are talking about. I took Calculus, a lab science, and a difficult inflected language with a different alphabet (Hebrew). Not exactly walkovers.</p>

5

<p>HED classes have a lot of reading. I think three is too much. It sounds like work plus three classes will hardly be a break. I think work plus one course might be a good level. She could take something fun next door at the Cambridge Adult Education Center :)</p>

6

<p>If I may make a suggestion… If your child wants to take some time off… what if she takes the semester off, but then take summer classes at Boston University? BU has open enrollment for summer classes, and BU has 2 summer terms, so you can get 2 classes in during the summer, 1 each summer term.</p>

<p>The MIT Math Department accepts some math classes at BU and other schools automatically as transfer credit.
<a href=“http://math.mit.edu/academics/undergrad/first/summercredit.html”>http://math.mit.edu/academics/undergrad/first/summercredit.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

7

<p>@nakoruru: did you just come onto CC, search for every HES citation and insert your opinion?</p>