Auditing Courses

[apop]

I'll be taking two courses next term (one of which will be an intense reading course) and am interested in auditing two others. Do any of you seasoned grad-schoolers think that to audit two will be too much? From what I understand, both professors will expect me to do the readings show up and contribute something substantial (as they should, no?), but I do not believe I will be asked to write any papers, give presentations, etc...

So many interesting courses, so little time.

Thanks for your input!

[emmm]

Auditing classes generally means you can do as little as you want to do, as you will receive no credit and no grade for the class. If the workload in your other classes gets to be too much, you can stop going to your audited classes with no penalties whatsoever. You will be learning for the sake of learning only.

[Alyanumbers]

Auditing classes generally means you can do as little as you want to do, as you will receive no credit and no grade for the class. If the workload in your other classes gets to be too much, you can stop going to your audited classes with no penalties whatsoever. You will be learning for the sake of learning only.

Only if by "no penalties whatsoever", you mean, "anything from the prof being cool with it to them deciding you're lazy/not making enough effort to not greeting you in the hallway anymore". There are profs who don't accept auditors precisely because they hate how they tend to disappear and reappear. Others really have no problem with it. Some of them may take a personal interest in you and ask you to do a presentation or write a paper. I've seen all of those happen to my friends and classmates.

[Eigen]

I haven't officially audited courses, but my school is pretty laid back about grad students just asking to sit in on courses of interest. The usual understanding is that if you're just sitting in, you're there to gain some particular information/the whole class may not be relevant to you.

We've got one class in my department that has 8-12 people routinely in class, but only 3 of them are actually registered to take it. The rest of us are just sitting in to get some background from the prof, who's really well known in this area. Those of us sitting in are more likely to not make all the classes (experiments getting in the way, etc) but we're definitely expected to participate and keep up when we're there- readings, projects, etc.

I've also had a good bit of success sitting in on classes in other disciplines in which I'd enjoy some of a refresher course, or want some overview information but don't need to know everything- or even where there's just a small portion of the class that I'm really interested in (some sub-section of a fairly broad topic class). I've never had one of the professors turn me down if I go to them and say "Hey, I'm a doctoral student over in mydepartment, and I'd really be interested in some of the stuff you're covering in yourclass, would you mind if I came and sat in occasionally?"

[MBeastA]

I would say go for it, but give the professors a heads up before. Let them know you may be taking on more than you can handle, but that you are genuinely interested in what they are teaching. Hopefully they will be fine with you disappearing if needed, but the previous poster is right that some may get annoyed.