I want to take PHY1B03, second year organic chem, and maybe another elective during the summer, is this a good idea? I heard that it would be easier.

Is there a max or min number of courses that I must take in the summer in order for it to count towards my GPA?

How are is tuition calculated for the summer months?

Thank you in advance!

Originally Posted by Lin~

I want to take PHY1B03, second year organic chem, and maybe another elective during the summer, is this a good idea? I heard that it would be easier.

Is there a max or min number of courses that I must take in the summer in order for it to count towards my GPA?

How are is tuition calculated for the summer months?

Thank you in advance!

Courses are super compact in the summer. You would be taking four courses, two per term, so that's a full course load for the summer--it's not usually going to be less work per course than during the school year. People who say summer courses are easier usually say that because they only have one or two that they're focusing on instead of 5 or 6.

All courses you take at mac will count for your GPA regardless of courseload or when you take them.

Tuition is calculated based on the number of units you take, same as during the normal school year.

So, you would be taking:

Term 1: Phys 1B03, Organic Chemistry 2OA3
Term 2: Organic Chemistry 2OB3, something else.

Let's break down your first term.

You will have 3 hours of lecture, twice a week for each subject. That means, you will have 6 lecture hours for Physics and 6 for Organic Chemistry. On top of this, you will have a tutorial or "drop in hours" once a week for Organic Chemistry which I highly recommend you attend. This may be one hour. You are now up to 13 hours. On top of this, you will have two labs a week (not including pre-lab prep). Each Orgo lab is 3 hours. Each Phys lab is 2 hours. That's 5 hours. You are now up to 18 hours.

That's slightly less than your average workload per week in first year. But it's a lot more condensed and with a schedule that dense, you don't have as much time to spread out your studying over weeks as you do with a 4 month term.

The decision is yours, but I wouldn't recommend summer school because you've heard it's easy. If you don't have the work ethic and drive needed to carry you through the summer, it will be challenging at best.

I have taken summer school myself. As mentioned before, unless you have the motivate to study, summer school is actually really hard because it's quite easy to fall back. Once you fall back it's very hard to get back up, simply because you cover so much per week. Summer school is a normal semester's work crammed into 7 weeks. I personally took a course this summer (organic chemistry) and I already found it to be overwhelming. My feelings were consistent with my classmates so I think it's a general consensus that only one summer course per term is recommended.

Hey Linda,
I'm doing summer school right now and I'm taking orgo. Orgo itself is pretty hard to handle, since there's so much to cover per week and on top of the readings, you need to practice the problems to have a clear understanding of the concepts. Not to mention, there's assignments, tutorials and online assignments that you have to finish if you're aiming for a high mark. One of my friends took PHYSICS 1B03 with orgo and although she did well in physics, she didn't do that well in orgo just because crammed everything last minute and didn't keep up with her readings.

If it was another subject that didn't require so much work, maybe doing two courses in the summer isn't too bad, but reconsider your decision if taking a course that requires a lot of work like Orgo.

Electives in summer are easy, not necessarily core courses like Physics or chem. I took Music and Econ this spring, slacked the whole time and still did pretty good.

However for last year summer I took math, couldn't afford to waste a min. He really threw alot of tricks on the final. I really had to work to get a good mark.