Taking a Graduate Course Junior Year?

[ogleea]

So I'm currently in the process of planning my course schedule next fall. I'm going to be a junior, but I was considering taking a 1 credit hour, 8000+ level lecture on epidemiology and biostatistics. It isn't required, but I am interested in it and I think the content would be useful for me later on. Based on the information on the school's website, each class sounds like it will be a seminar presented by a speaker doing related research or reviewing current literature. I was wondering if anyone had any advice/feedback on taking a grad course as an undergrad student and what to expect? Especially since I have what I think will be a somewhat challenging schedule already.

I've done busy semesters before (16+ credit hours, working 20+ hours a week...) and I feel that I'm pretty good at staying organized and on top of things. But I was more wondering:

1. How much background should someone have before taking a grad course like this?
2. What should I expect as far as study time needed/homework/tests...?
3. How much harder is the content compared to a similar undergraduate course?

If anyone could answer these or give me any other advice, I'd appreciate it!

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[Fdsa2495]

I took a grad course during my junior year and it was fun. Although it was just one professor and no seminar-type lectures, it was fast paced. Surprisingly, the grad course I took was something similar to what I was researching in my lab so I had more background info than the other graduate students taking the course. Study time for me was similar to undergrad, homework was also similar to upper div undergraduate courses but I hardly ever did mine as it wasn't graded. There were no exams for the course but there were projects/presentations which was the bulk of our grade (made it much easier).
For me, I found most upper div undergraduate course harder but that is totally based on what kind of professor you have and how they like to teach the course. But you'd be surprised how laid back the graduate students were.
One thing that really hit me when I took the course was office hours for the course. For undergraduate courses I loved office hours but when I took this course, the professor did not hold any office hours and some of the grad students laughed at me when I asked about it. I quickly realized that courses like this are just understand on your own and move along because no one really has time to sit and explain every little detail. The professor usually just gave us research articles to read and then we had to present them and the final project was to have your own research data (which was hard) but the professor knew I was an undergrad and I'm guessing he graded really easily as I ended up with an A.

All in all, really depends on the professor, how grad courses are taught at your school, and a little bit of luck. Hope this helps!

 

[DrHart]

I did grad classes my senior year. Didn't really notice a difference. A 1 credit hour grad class won't be too heavy imo. Just stay on top of your stuff, you'll be fine. Don't worry

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

I did a grad class my junior year. It was fun. As long as you can handle the work, and you enjoy the subject matter, go for it.