On average, how long are your office hours visits?

SadHippo
Wed, 17 Oct 2012 20:02:05 +0000

From my experience, if it’s a class that is primarily problem solving, (ex: engineering, math, some sciences) the professors office hours get way overcroweded. The office can be totally consumed with kids and I’m lucky if I can get in 3 questions in two hours so I have chosen not to attend on many occasions in the past for this reason. However, my math classes (I’m a math major) have been getting smaller now as I’ve gone through more specefic classes and office hours are becoming more manageable since there are less students in the class. For any non-problem solving class that I’ve taken (I usually label these as reading classes), the professors office hours are typically totally empty. I will occasionally be confused about what a teacher did for a particular math problem but I’m never confused when sitting in history class and my teacher is just showing a power point with information that essentially must be memorized (as opposed to info in a problem solving class that must be understood). If you need letters of recommendation, then it is extremely important to have a few professors that know you very well that are preferably in your field of study and in upper division coursework. Attending a professors office hours would be very important in this regard because that would be the best way for the professor to learn more about you, otherwise there’s no way that professor can write a good letter of recommendation for you.