How many credit hours to take per semester?

[Guest criminologist]

What is the recommended number of credit hours to take per semester for a doctoral student?

 

For my PhD program I am starting in the fall I get 9 hours waived per semester. I noticed that if I took 9 hours per semester I would finish the program in 2 years/4 semesters due to already having an MS degree which takes off 24 credit hours. do PhD students typically take 9 hours or 6 each semester? Also the funding requires working 20 hours a week so would 9 credit hours in a semester be manageable ?

Thanks.

[fuzzylogician]

It totally depends. In my program you do 4 courses (3 very intensive, one less so) in each semester of your first year, then normally 2-3 courses per semester in the second and third year. 4 courses would be a lot, but not unheard of. Some people occasionally even do 5, if there are lots of once-in-a-long-while courses offered in the same semester, but that makes for a thoroughly crazy semester. People don't usually do more than 3, preferably 2, courses when TAing, but our TA requirement is so low (2 semesters over the course of our 5 years in the program) that we can afford it. 

 

I'd consult with current students in your program about recommended loads. I'm sure it varies and it may even depend on specific courses and/or specific instructors.

[rising_star]

It really depends. In my MA program (which was joint MA/PhD), the standard was to take 10 credit hours per semester (3 seminars plus 1 credit for colloquium). In my PhD program, 6 hours of courses (so 2 seminars/classes) is all you need to be full-time and that's all some people take. I continued to take 9 credit hours because that's what I was used to.

[Guest criminologist]

I know that the standard for full time for masters students is 9 and for PhD is 6. Do you think it is manageable to do 9 hours for a PhD program and have a 20 hours a week GA duties ? I believe people who come in to PHD programs without masters would need to take at least 9 per semester though.

[Gauche]

In my program, most students take 6 hours per semester, but that's because most of them are awarded GTAships (teaching two sections). It's highly discouraged for students to take more than 6 hours while they're teaching, but if they're not, they need to take 9 hours.

[TakeruK]

Just to throw in a "at my school" example:

 

Full time status at my school is 36 units (1 unit = 1 hour of work per week) per quarter. A course is usually 9 units (sometimes 12). During our first year, we usually take 2-3 courses per quarter (18-27 units) and spend the rest of our time doing research (we sign up for whatever # of research units to make our total equal to 36 [or more, but having more has no benefit]). In reality, we probably work closer to 50 hours per week including seminar attendance etc. 

 

So, to me, a manageable load is where I work a total of 50 ish hours a week, and no more than 27 of those are spent on classes. For the type of classes I take, I budget 2 hours of work at home for every 1 hour in lecture but I think this depends on your field (in mine, readings much shorter and more optional--they're more like a secondary resource). We don't TA during the years where we have heavy courseloads, but when we do, the "on paper" hourly commitment is 15 hours/week. So, in order to manage a productive 20-30 hours of research per week, I wouldn't want to take more than 1 class when I am TAing and not more than 3 classes at the same time when not TAing.