What the heck is "unit?"

[relatively prime]

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Ok, so on Stanford's secondary they want you to put down how many units our pre-med courses were... and I have no idea what a "unit" is. Could anyone help me out... please? 🙁 Thanks 😀

 

[souljah1]

credits

 

[leila2]

my undergrad used units instead of credits. everyone just had to take four classes per semester (4 units), which translated to 4 credits each for other (e.g. grad school) purposes. what sucked was that i could be in class 22 hours/week and it was considered the same as someone who was in class 12 hours/week because we were all taking 4 units. i'm guessing stanford means credits, but i would ask them to be sure.

 

[relatively prime]

I still don't really get it... guess I'll just call. THanks though 🙂

 

[souljah1]

what don't you get? one unit = one credit.

 

[dr kevin40]

lol

i don't get the confusion

 

[Rapid Decomposition]

Not exactly, it sounds like different schools use different credit/unit systems. I think the "standard", if there could be such a thing, is that a regular lecture/lab class (like all the premed requirements) that meets 3-4 hours a week is 4 units per semester/quarter. So if a school tells you you need 8 semester units of something, they just mean you need to take a year. I hope I'm not stating the obvious but I think there was a little confusion.

 

[lola]

Originally posted by leila2
my undergrad used units instead of credits. everyone just had to take four classes per semester (4 units), which translated to 4 credits each for other (e.g. grad school) purposes. what sucked was that i could be in class 22 hours/week and it was considered the same as someone who was in class 12 hours/week because we were all taking 4 units. i'm guessing stanford means credits, but i would ask them to be sure.

hey, mine too! i didn't think any other schools had it like this. unfortunately, all of my courses translated to 3.5 credits each -- even those science classes with 3 hours of class and 4+ hrs of lab/week. i think i got screwed... oh well! i'm hoping schools won't care that i actually only have 7 credits for 2 semesters of science courses. i'm guessing not.

 

[relatively prime]

Originally posted by souljah1
what don't you get? one unit = one credit.

Well... according to Lola and leila that's not always true... but thanks anyway. 🙂

I'm just going to call.... I'll post what they say.

 

[jalan2]

Relatively Prime,

Did you call Stanford? What did they say about units? My problem is, I went to a school that had semester credits, but for the summers I went to schools with quarter credits. Do I have to convert everything to semester credits like AMCAS did? From reading the instructions, Stanford didn't say to convert anything one way or the other. But that's so misleading. I wish they were like EVMS, which tells you to put either 'Q' or 'S' behind the credits...

Thanks.

 

[Anath]

At Yale, ever class (except labs and languages) was considered to be 1 credit. However, for med school purposes, we were told to just multiply our Yale credits by 3 (1 YC = 3 credits at most schools). For some of my secondaries, I wrote them a little note about this.

 

[none]

Schools need to standardize this and stop messing with calling one class a single unit. ugh

Anyways, in the usual semester/quarter unitary system, a standard quarter has 12-16 units and a standard semester has 12-15 units. Each lecture class is 3 units in a semester system and 4 units in a quarter system. These numbers are based vaguely on the number of lecture hours per class per week, with a slight adjustment for the difference in length between a quarter and a semester. Now labs very rarely count for their full hourly time commitment in hours. I've often seen lab courses counting for (in terms of units) 1/3 the hours spent in lab per week.

 

[Mystique]

Everyone in here has something different to say...
Anyways, the way I understand it..some schools call each class a "unit." For example...if my school were on the semester system, and I took a bio, math, ochem, and history class...that's 3 BCPM units (1 bio, 1 chem, and 1 math) and 1 "other unit." If I were to take 2 bio classes second semster along w/ orgy and painting, that'd be 3 more BCPM (2 bio, 1 chem) units and 1 more "other unit." So, at the end of the year, I'd have 5 science units, 1 math, 1 history, and 1 art for a total of 8 "units."

 

[Diogenes]

Originally posted by Moleculo
one unit = one penis

I was just going to post that...

 

[lola]

get your mind out of the gutter, diogenes 😉

 

[relatively prime]

I made a whole thread about this... but oh well... I'll type it again here.

I called stanford and they said that if you are at a regular spring/fall 2 semester school this is how you convert to units....

Say your one semester course is Y credits, then...

class's units = (Y x 2)/3

That's what the lady said... it's because Stanford uses a "quarter system" that has 3 semesters.... yeah I know, that doesn't sound right, but that's what they call it.

 

[CoffeeCat]

Originally posted by relatively prime
Stanford uses a "quarter system" that has 3 semesters.... yeah I know, that doesn't sound right, but that's what they call it.

A quarter system has four quarters - the forth is summer 🙂