Assignments at a Glance
You need a roadmap to help you find your way around the academic freeway. Things move faster when you are taking higher level courses. To help you plan for this you need to write all your assignments down in order to see what is coming up and prepare accordingly. Here is a sample table to help you see what you need to get done. If you want to make your own click here for the word document in order to change the dates and personalize the table to fit your needs.
Time
A general rule of thumb for college classes is that you should expect to study about 2 to 3 hours per week outside class for each unit of credit. Based on this rule of thumb, a student taking 15 credit hours should expect to spend 30 to 45 hours each week studying outside of class. Combined with time in class, this works out to a total of 45 to 60 hours spent on academic work - not much more than the time required of a typical job, and you get to choose your own hours. Of course, if you are working while you attend school, you will need to budget your time carefully.
If you find that you are spending fewer hours than these guidelines suggest, you can probably improve your grade by studying more. If you are spending more hours than these guidelines suggest, you may be studying inefficiently; in that case, you should talk to your instructor about how to study more effectively.
