im a senior working on my college applications right now, and i have so many questions about how college actually works.
when students talk about how they are constantly skipping class or have attended barely attended class, how is it that you can still graduate or get credit for this class or even pass the class without hearing the lectures? i dont understand that concept because speaking from a high school perspective attending class is most of work you have to do, its where we recieve our assignments and where we learn everything and it would be near impossible to pass without attending class
what do lecture hours mean, when it says u need 15 lecture hours to pass a semester does that quite literally mean you need to be in person in class for 15 hours in total by the end of the semester?
how many lectures are there for each class every week? with a semester being a few months long 15 total hours of class time sounds short unless each class only meets bi weekly or something
if a student wanted to could they attend every single lecture? or is that something that virtually no one does
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So this varies a little bit from institution to institution but I’ll try and explain it simply.
A class in college is worth so many “Credit Hours”. Usually somewhere from 3-5. Typically a 3 credit hour class meets three times a week for an hour per lecture.
To be a full time student you have to be enrolled in 12 or more credit hours. So in one typical week you’ll have about 12 hours of lecture/class to be considered full a full time student. My college made you get written approval from your advisor if you wanted to have more than 18 credit hours.
Lecture and classwork is the smallest time obligations for a college student. At my school for every credit hour you could expect 3-5 hours of homework a week on top of your actual class time.
Now as for how can you skip class and still pass? Well attendance isn’t typically taken in college courses, especially lectures. At the beginning of the year you get your syllabus with the lecture schedule, test schedule and your homework/etc assignments as well as the weighting of your grades.
Many of my classes homework was 30-40% of your grade and your tests including your midterms and finals are the other 60-70% of your grade. If you learned the material and did the work you could easily pass. Learning alone is the hard part.
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