Insane amounts of credits per semester

[UMTYMP_student]

<p>Yes a typical load would be 48 credits and most classes are 12 credits although some are 9 or 15 credits. Each class at MIT worth X credits is given a breakdown A-B-C where A is the number of hours of lectures per week, B is the number of hours of lab per week, and C is the expected amount of out of class time per week. A+B+C=X. You are correct about the number of credits for various course loads. Most of my evidence about this comes from personally talking to people although I searched for but could not find more complete statistics. I did find this article [The</a> story BCG offered me $16,000 not to tell - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/dubai.html]The”>http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/dubai.html) where the author says he too 7-10 classes per semester. This article [Load</a> up on life, not classes - The Tech](<a href=“http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/editorial.html]Load”>http://tech.mit.edu/V130/N18/editorial.html) warns against taking such overloads and states

@Editorial: Load up on life

At MIT, you will feel the temptation to overload yourself with classes, to spend all your time tooling away on problem sets. You will be surprised at how easy it is to allow academics to consume your life. You’ll become, as we like to say at MIT, terribly, horribly hosed. And, as an MIT student, you might decide to embrace this extreme, sleep-deprived state of existence. You might choose to intensify it by taking five, six, even seven classes. You’ll spend your evenings, weekends, and vacations hauled up in your room, emerging only to declare to your fellow housemates or hallmates how very, very busy you’ve been, taking pride in being perceived as “hardcore.” At MIT, a certain culture exists that idealizes this type of lifestyle.

</p>