College is oh so different from high school in so many ways. One of the biggest differences is that you choose all of your own classes. While that may be great, it can also be stressful when you aren’t sure how to go about it. Choosing the right classes can make or break your semester, and maybe even your ability to graduate. To lower your stress over this, I am sharing with you my 6 tips to know when choosing your classes.
Check the graduation requirements
Each school and each major has its own specific requirements that must be met to graduate. When choosing your classes for the semester, be sure to take a look at the specific things required of you. Another reason to check the requirements is that certain classes have prerequisites that need to be met before you can even take them. You don’t want to schedule your classes willy-nilly and not notice you never took that one class you needed to take to graduate until it is too late.
Decide how many credits to take
Make sure you are taking enough credits to meet your own personal need. Such as being a part-time or full-time student, or having enough credits to meet your federal/scholarship funding. Not having enough credits can result in your funding not going through to pay for the semester. And having too many can put you into credit overload where you get charged a fee for those extra classes.
Plus the more credit hours you take the more workload you will have. Don’t take on more than you can chew, but don’t take the minimum amount of credits just because you feel like it especially if you aren’t sure what this will mean to how long it will take you to graduate.
Morning or Night Classes
When creating your class schedule know whether you want to take morning or night classes. If you like to stay up late and don’t wake up till noon unless you have too, do NOT take 8am classes. Although, sometimes they can’t be avoided (I am on semester 4 of it somehow not being able to be avoided??) but in that situation try not to have more than 2 or 3 days a week where you have to do that. Night classes can be good but be sure you won’t feel the urge to skip them because by that time you have crawled into bed and started watching Netflix. (I know I do this.)
Don’t leave huge gaps of time in your schedule
Try and set your classes close together. You are more likely to go to all your classes when they are one after another instead of having hour gaps between them. But if you are going to have the gaps of time in your schedule make sure you use that time to be productive. That way there is less to do at the end of the day.
Plan Plan Plan
Make sure you plan. Don’t go into choosing your schedule without a plan and thinking you can just wing it. By the time your registration slot comes around the classes you had thought about taking may be filled up, or multiple classes are at the same time, and when this happens and you don’t have a plan you could be in trouble. So be sure to have a plan, and some backup plans, to ensure an easy (easier?) registration.
Meet with your advisor
Whether you have to meet with your advisor to register or not you definitely should make an appointment anyway. Your advisor can help you to find classes to take when you don’t know how to fulfill a requirement or push you on the right path towards graduating on time.
I hope this post helped to take off some stress around choosing your classes. Are there any other things you think are important to know regarding how to choose your classes?
