<p>Is the coarseload at Wesleyan manageable? How many hours of homework/studying should I expect to be doing per night? I’m going to major in biology so I will be taking a lot of science classes, but I plan on taking the average number of courses per semester (4?). My experience with my AP classes, particularly AP Chem and AP Bio, is that our tests are on material we have never covered or that go far beyond what the book covers. Is this just my teachers being inept or is this in accurate representation of what professors expect (going above and beyond) at Wesleyan? Thanks!</p>
<p>Not to be mean or anything but did you mean “course load”?</p>
<p>Wesleyan science professors will never test you on subjects beyond what the book covers. in fact, most will only expect that you know what was discussed in class (and not even worry about what the book covers that you didnt get to in class). however, they expect that you know what was discussed in class VERY well.</p>
<p>How heavy your load is at Wesleyan will depend heavily on what classes you’re taking. For reading intensive classes (i.e., most history, govt., sociology, etc.) you will be reading somewhere around 50 pages for each class meeting. I haven’t taken a writing intensive course yet, but from what I understand they generally involve papers every couple weeks. Science and math classes mostly assign one problem set per week, in addition to reading/reviewing to ensure mastery of the material.</p>
<p>In my experience, science professors test exclusively on their lectures, though this may not be universal. In general, though, I wouldn’t expect material never covered in lecture or reading to be on a test.</p>
<p>I kind of disagree with smartalic. Science classes are a little tougher gradewise than other departments - it’s easier to get a top grade (like an A+) but also harder to get As overall. If you don’t study at all, it’s easy to just outright fail tests. (I learned this the hard way.) If you do keep up, you’ll do OK. Science courses will sometimes test you on concepts and such that aren’t covered in the book that you would be expected to get from lectures.</p>
<p>It’s hard to put a homework time per day on it. There are problem sets and labs - and you really do need to keep up with the material (which usually moves at a reasonably fast pace) as it goes on because cramming concepts is pretty difficult, especially as you move to more upper-level classes.</p>
<p>I think what madjoy said is a nice corollary- anything said in class is fair game, regardless of whether or not it’s in the book. however, material in the text that was never discussed would not be tested unless the professor explicitly mentions this is the case (at least that’s been my experience so far).</p>
<p>your grade will reflect your effort- you can’t slink by on the work and expect to ace the exams.</p>
<p>There’s no “average” number of minutes you should expect to study for per night; it depends on your personal course load, rigor of those courses (100 vs 300 level), and the amount of effort you are willing to expend (you don’t have to do all the readings all the time, but doing so helps get high grades). That said let me lay out a couple general guidelines: 1) for my social science classes i expect to spend anywhere between 2-4 hours per class session per class reading, but I could definitely get by in some classes just by going to the lectures and taking notes, and I also sometimes save up readings and just do them all at once right before an exam; 2) papers, tests, and assessments for most classes that I take tend to clump 3-4 times a semester, usually 1 paper after the first month, a midterm, another paper 2-3 weeks after the midterm, and a final research paper. </p>
<p>Page lengths for papers for most of my classes are 6-8 pages for papers written during semester and 8-12 for final papers. Take 4 of these type of classes and you end up under a lot of stress concentrated at certain times during the semester, but during the rest of the semester the atmosphere is much more relaxed. However, if you take a research seminar, you usually can count on writing a 20-30+ page paper, which means you are basically chilling throughout the semester and then go through a truly excruciating period at the end of it as the deadline for the paper nears. I personally spend much more time evenly distributed throughout the semester working on my mid-level lecture classes, while for my research paper it was more relaxed throughout the semester and then a terrifying period at the end as I had to write the paper. </p>
<p>Hope that helps. This advice stands for social science and humanities classes; I’ve only taken intro science classes so I can’t speak for them.</p>
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<p>In my experience, the number is MUCH higher than that, though it probably depends on what kind of things you are reading. In an English class you’ll read about a book a week, and in Religion and the more reading heavy film classes, I’ve experienced an average of somewhere between 150 and 300 pages a week for a class that meets twice a week.</p>