<p>I know a guy taking 28 credit hours this quarter, all math, physics, and CS classes. I have seen his schedule with my own eyes and have heard it vouched from others, including faculty. I HAVE NEVER SEEN HIM DOING HOMEWORK, and he has a 3.95 major GPA. I think he spends what “free time” he has hanging out with other students of his major and helping them with their homework. He is taking 34 next quarter.</p>
<p>What are the most you have heard of?</p>
<p>How could he possibly go to all his classes? He must have great relationships with the faculty, and I imagine they adjust due dates/test dates for him.</p>
<p>Also, 21 is the most I’ve heard at my school, any more and no one would hear from them. They probably exist though.</p>
<p>How many of the courses are courses with labs, term projects, or computer programming? I remember that one such course was about as much work as two courses that were just lecture/discussion/homework/tests, so that taking more credits of the latter was relatively easy to do, but taking overloads with labs, term projects, or computer programming was much less doable.</p>
<p>28.5 is the most I’ve ever heard of</p>
<p>My good friend took 28 credits one quarter (7 classes, 4 credits each) while tutoring for a CS class. He eventually had to drop one course, but it was an impressive feat, nonetheless. He also managed to finish his CE degree with a law minor in just 2 years after he transferred from a community college, and he finished his master’s in EE in one year after that.</p>
<p>While it all seems impressive, I should mention that he couldn’t have done it without the hard work and effort of his friends and lab mates who shouldered most of the work load for him. I know more than one person who eventually soured on him because of this. He did what he could, but because he was stretched so thin, he really couldn’t contribute much to group projects. He was smart enough that he could cram and pass exams, but sometimes I get the impression that he hasn’t retained a whole lot of information from his college education.</p>
<p>Btw, he’s currently working full time as an engineer and going to law school at night AND doing a law internship. I think he should stop and think about what he could have accomplished had he taken his time a little.</p>
<p>On WikiAnswers, ChaCha, or one of those sites, the answer to a question like this was something like 65 credit hours. My guess is that either the respondent pulled that out of their *ss or it was a military or work-study program where non-academic work - and a lot of it, too - all counted.</p>
<p>I personally took 21 one semester (had 18 and got a last minute call from the university I was short for graduation). I know a couple people tool 22, a mix of 3 and 4 credits.</p>
<p>My daughter’s roommate boyfriend (premed) had like 18 hours all phys/chem/bio/calc and he partied 5 days a week, largely never studied and had a 4.0. He was on full ride. </p>
<p>Some people are just that smart…</p>
<p>He is a genius lol. I have heard of someone who self-studied on the summer for some classes and then took 7 classes and attended tests and a few lectures for classes where attendance is not required. Maybe your friend is doing the same and has a very high IQ :)</p>
<p>My father took 22 in one semester so that he could graduate faster. I think he had two labs :). He was STEM but not engineering, though. I hope to be able to overload a bit as well, but we’ll see. I do believe that I read somewhere that some people at MIT took advantage of the first semester pass/no record status to great effect and got a lot of credit, but I don’t recall any number of hours in particular.</p>
<p>College, especially engineering, is not a race!! It is an opportunity to learn and develop skills to use as a professional engineer. To be at the top of your profession, you need to learn not only the “how” but also the “why”. I’ve met and worked with engineers who could rattle off computation after computation once someone told them what was needed to be done. Needless to say, I didn’t think much of those engineers and they never rose to any great heights in the profession.</p>
<p>If you can handle a great number of units and really learn the “why”, great. Otherwise, scaling it back a bit would be better in the long run.</p>
<p>A friend at RPI routinely took 7 classes at a time, graduating in 3 years as a math major with no summer courses. He had only Calc 1 as an AP credit.</p>
<p>Mere humans could not have done this as effortlessly as he did. He was crazy smart - he had 4 actuarial exams done by the fall of his senior year and had discovered two novel iterative solutions to calculate pi just messing around on the computer. He had pi memorized to 5600 places and wanted to make a printout with an even 10,000.</p>
<p>around 20+ something units from two combined junior colleges. some how he managed get A and B in all of them.</p>
<p>If the guy was this smart and still went to actuarial science…</p>
<p>I’m a freshman in 16 now and 17-18.5 next semester (depending on whether I can get into a certain class), and some of these numbers sound ungodly. With that said, I would do better in 22 hours of math-based classes than in 16 of reading- and paper-based ones, since the latter is such a time commitment.</p>
<p>It does come down to people’s strengths. I know some people who can knock out A grade 3 page essays in 30 minutes and then take 8 hours of head on wall to get through a physics homework. I’m the opposite, I have a lit class, two aero, and two physics courses this semester and my lit class nearly takes as much weekly labor as the other 4 classes combined. I have a friend double majoring in aero and astronomy taking 19-20 credits per semester. He’s getting A’s, but also doesnt have any other commitments, no research project, no internships, no girlfriend, etc etc. I think its more impressive when someone has to juggle life responsibilities while taking a full time load, but I’m biased.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Turbo - He grew up in a blue-collar family and liked math. This was his first stab at life envisioned by a 17-year-old without a lot of guidance. He is now a PhD theoretical physicist and college professor.</p>