Does 20 credit hours of school sound overwhelming?

Is each class four hours? Or three? I am guessing….four? So that is five classes?

I took 16–20 credits per semester (4–5 classes each with discussion sections) and worked 25 hours a week during school. That was a lot for me with all the studying. My social life was limited.

15 hours of credit is considered a full load. I think that you won’t be seeing you-know-who very much.

Yes it is a lot and with the part time job, you and or your school work will suffer. As a rule you really need to allow for 3 hours of study time for every hour of class time to do well, so do the math.

It may all depend on your school.
At my college, 12 credit hours is considered to be full, as opposed to the 15 at @marinelife.‘s So the timing varies.

If you weren’t working, I’d say that 20 is certainly doable. But if you’re working 30 hours a week for your parents, I would not suggest doing 20 credits, that seems way overboard.

The most I’ve done was 16 credits in a semester.

It’s been done, but 12–15 hours that’s what it was at my university, at least is called “full-time” for a reason. More than full-time plus a close-to full time job means that you very well be burning yourself out, and quickly. During my undergrad, I once took 18 credits while working 15 hours a week, and I remember it being flippin hard. And social life? No time.
Is there any reason you can’t take one or two of the classes next semester, and/or tell your folks you want to limit the number of hours you’ll be working?

Actually I dropped one of my classes. It’s 18 credit hours.

Algebra- 5 credits
Psychology- 5 credits
Business Management- 5 credits (online)
Spreadsheet- 3 credits

@chelle21689 Are these classes you’re going to be interested in? That helps a lot. What’s considered full time at your school?

i think 12 cred hours is full time.

It do.

@chelle21689 Your school set full time at 12 hours for a reason. So do you think 1.5 the recommended full load plus working more than part time sounds overwhelming? You’re the only one who knows how you’ll react to this schedule. I would want to jump off a bridge and be breaking out 2 weeks into it. I did it in grad school (1.5 times full load, 40 hours of work a week) and it sucked. A lot. We’re talking insomnia and exhaustion and irritability…

I think i could do it. I’m kind of trying to keep myself busy…I can work a little less and I don’t have a bunch of friends. I usually go out once or twice a week anyways.

With that schedule, you’ll be going out 0 times a week. If this is your first semester, you should take 15 credits max while working just to get a feel for things. No sense in starting off overwhelmed and having your gpa suffer for it. If you feel like you’ve got too much free time with 15 credits, you can always pick up more shifts at work. And don’t judge the workload based on the first couple of weeks, it’s when midterms come around and you’ve got multiple projects, papers and reports all on top of studying for exams that things get crazy.

it depends what the courses are. If they’re all classes that you’ll really enjoy, or if they’re all 100 level classes, you might be okay. My friends have music classes that are 1–3 units and sometimes they take 7–8 classes a semester, but honestly their classes are all about practicing their music instruments—nothing too hard.. Personally, I would only take a regular load of classes if you plan to work more than 20 hours a week. If you’re one of those uber smart kids who can pull it off and gloat about it to your friends, then go for it. But if you really want to learn a lot in your classes, I would suggest taking a more normal pace.

For the time you could spend on that extra class trying to get out of college earlier, you could spend more time doing some kind of extracurricular, something that looks better on a resume than “I finished college in 3 years” —Trust me, employers will be more impressed that you finished college at a normal pace and were active in clubs, community service or short-term internships.

I’ve done 18 credit hours and 20 hours of a part-time job at the same time, but it was stressful and I didn’t get the best grades. That was with average difficulty in classes. My busiest semester was actually only at 14 hours, but the courses were very demanding.

With the amount of hours you are working, I would suggest lowering your work hours, credits or both. I’d pay attention to how hard the classes are when you can still drop out of them. Ask yourself if, when the time for midterms and finals comes, you can handle working on school twice as much.

If you do decide to go ahead and brave such a huge load, remember that you can drop out even after the deadline. You can get medical withdrawals, as well as other kinds.

Depends on how the online course is set up. If it is a self paced class you should have no problems. If it is one that you have to do daily assignments or weekly tests, you may find you are biting off more than you can chew.

Just remember rule of thumb is that you spend 2 hours studying/homework for every hour spent in class. Don’t expect to spend much time on anything else.

I did it when I was in college, but school work always came easy for me.

It’s a really full load, but if you are a focused student you’ll have no problem. I had semesters like this and survived—I liked college though.