My engineering daughter…on quarters…had very few electives. Her school had a core course requirement…and I guess the choices for those could be viewed as electives. But that was it.
The school did not charge an additional amount for students who wanted to take orchestra and private lessons…and therefore exceeded the number of credits allowed. They didn’t want to discourage students for these types of courses.
But the max was 18 credits which really was a lot for a quarter.