Is 17 credits my first semester too much?

bk4972b
Fri, 22 May 2015 02:01:24 +0000

@LunaHunt – I had the same dilemma you have now a few years ago. I chose to do 17 credits. Judging from your schedule now and what you’ve said about your past academic experiences, I think you could do the 17 credits, but it really depends on your priorities in my opinion. To be frank, lots of students enroll in the maximum 17 credits either to get ahead or to get the most bang for their buck while at AU.

For now, I think you should enroll, go speak to your SIS Undergraduate Academic Adviser when you get on campus, and then keep the course or drop it during the add/drop period.

This is going to sound stupid but when I made my decision to enroll in 17 credits, I ranked the difficulty of my classes. I see the Mentorship Program and Community Based Research Lab as throwaway, easy courses. I see your course load like this:

[] SIS Mentorship Program - easy
[] Community Based Research Lab - easy
[] Cross-Cultural Communication – ranges from easy to medium depending on professor, but I’ve never heard anyone say they had trouble with this course
[] French Elementary I – ranges from easy to medium, but I say this leans more towards easy since it’s Elementary I
[] World Politics – medium or hard depending on the professor you have, some people get frustrated with IR theory (P.S. stick it out because IR is not all about theory! This is a course that weeds students out of the IR program sometimes because they think IR makes no sense after taking this course)
[] Microeconomics – medium or hard depending on your level of proficiency/professor

So, if you truly want to double major and get ahead, I think you can afford to add another course into the mix. It sounds like you’re the type of student who will always get the work done given your past experience maintaining good grades while taking on heavy course loads. Three things I would tell you is:

[ol]
[] Clearly, you’re very ambitious, like many AU students are, because you already know or have some idea about what you want to do post-graduation. Maintaining your GPA will be important for grad school, but you have another 4-year stretch to get there. I think if you handle stress well, are the type of person who will always get the work done, and one of your key priorities during college is to get ahead, I think you can do the 17 credits.
[] It’s great you got a 4.0 GPA even after taking multiple AP courses in high school, but since there is no grade inflation from honors in college, there is a different measure of what “above average” grades are in college. Just be prepared that you won’t get the same grades as you did in high school.
[li] None of what I told you matters. Go speak to your Academic Adviser in the SIS Undergraduate Advising Office during the first week of school! [/li][/ol]