scheduling for next year

[beannaithe]

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I have a question about course load in your junior / senior year. (I'll be a senior next year...applying in school this round). But I see a lot of people saying that adcoms look for people who take heavy loads.

What constitutes a "heavy" load? Is it the number of credits or the number of classes? For example, last semester I took 11 science credits (2 upper level bios, physics and a research class) but only 14 overall credits. Is that considered "light"?

And another question, I was wondering if adcoms look at Pass / Fail classes negatively. There's a class that I wanted to take just because, but I was going to take it pass fail because I probably won't have time to devote my full attention to it.

Thanks!! 😀

 

[toothart]

I'm sorry, but I don't recall hearing that is true. I think your best bet is to take as many credits or classes as your schedule and you can handle. Since your a senior you'll know exactly what you can devote your time to. I do advise you to not decrease the difficulty level of your courses, that is try to keep classes in the 300 and 400 levels. I think any adcom will look at quality and not quantity.

 

[Comet208]

Keep in mind that while attending the classes and juggling many other tasks, you want to set time aside to be touch with the schools on a regular basis, do follow up, fill out secondaries, and miss class/lab/exams due to interviews, which will add up to almost a part-time job.