Advisor's advice in coursework? Auditing classes?

[MastersHoping]

How do you usually select your classes for a Ph.D?

I just try to do what is required and no more. But as a huge language buff, I like to audit language classes, most of which are relevant to my research interests, but some just for personal interest. After all, it doesn't cost anything except time to audit, and I don't have to take the final exam. Do I need advisor's approval for these kinds of things? Do many grad students audit language classes or other classes (maybe like research methodology ones or something)? 

[fuzzylogician]

I basically did only what was required for credit, and I sat in or officially audited several other classes. I also took two years of language courses just for fun, for credit because they wouldn't let me take them as an auditor. I don't think anyone minded, as long as I was doing alright on my research and keeping up with my other obligations. My advisor wasn't really the type to worry about official requirements. 

[Eigen]

I didn't audit anything, I either took it or emailed the instructor and asked to sit in. 

Remember that while it's free for you, your department (often) has to pay per credit for courses you take. It was never an issue for my program, but there were some departments that got really upset about having to pay tuition for non-required courses. When the money is going to your department/school for tuition, it's not a big deal, and the tuition waiver is pretty much a shell game. When it's going to another department/program, however, it impacts the departments bottom line in completely different ways, and it's something to be aware of. 

I had lots of friends who took language classes just by emailing the instructor, introducing themselves as a grad student, and asking to sit in. I did it for a lot of courses in related fields that I was interested in, but wouldn't have audited. I never had someone tell me no, fwiw. Most instructors are pretty happy to have someone interested and engaged in class. 

[MastersHoping]

11 hours ago, Eigen said:

Remember that while it's free for you, your department (often) has to pay per credit for courses you take. 

     Wow really? I never knew that! 

     I guess I'm going to take off the language class I had for an audit just for fun. There's another language class I'm going to do P/F because it's both interesting to me and relevant to my areas of research interest. 

[Eigen]

6 minutes ago, MastersHoping said:

     Wow really? I never knew that! 

     I guess I'm going to take off the language class I had for an audit just for fun. There's another language class I'm going to do P/F because it's both interesting to me and relevant to my areas of research interest. 

Double check with your department. It's been the case everywhere I've seen, but I don't know your school in particular. 

Might also be close enough for you depending on where Asian Studies is housed, that the money pretty much recycles. 

[MastersHoping]

Just now, Eigen said:

Double check with your department. It's been the case everywhere I've seen, but I don't know your school in particular. 

Might also be close enough for you depending on where Asian Studies is housed, that the money pretty much recycles. 

Oh I'm at a different school now and I'm in political science phd program haha just didn't change my avatar/description. But yeah that's definitely interesting to me - I just assumed that the tuition waiver covered everything. 

[Eigen]

3 minutes ago, MastersHoping said:

Oh I'm at a different school now and I'm in political science phd program haha just didn't change my avatar/description. But yeah that's definitely interesting to me - I just assumed that the tuition waiver covered everything. 

It does! It's just that the tuition waiver is actually money your program is paying. Many schools break down tuition by credit, so new credits cost the program more. 

[rising_star]

11 hours ago, Eigen said:

It does! It's just that the tuition waiver is actually money your program is paying. Many schools break down tuition by credit, so new credits cost the program more. 

Yep. And it definitely varies by school. Even the number of hours required to be a FT grad student varies. At my MA institution, it was 12 hours required for full-time (everyone took at least 3 credit hours of research, which was dedicated to thesis work). At my PhD institution, it was 6 hours for full-time status. There, we also all enrolled in this one credit hour course for our colloquium, the revenue from which helped pay to bring speakers in for those talks. Even though we had tuition waivers and weren't actually paying for the course, the institution assigned a dollar amount to this, which the department got.

[TakeruK]

It definitely varies by school. The ones that I've considered for grad schools (both public and private) did not have a per-credit tuition program. It's the same tuition whether it's your first year and you're taking 3 courses or it's your last year and you only have 1 course left. 

At my current school, the undergraduate tuition is the same way---they pay the same set rate no matter how many courses they take. For grad students, we have an "on-paper" rate equal to the undergraduate rate, but the real tuition cost that the department pays is set to be a percentage of our stipend (i.e. charged like overhead, but I believe there are other overhead charges in addition to this). I learned this because our school was recently considering what to do with the recent ACA (Obamacare) ruling that they were not going to be allowed to subsidize our health insurance in the future (full cost is $2700/year, school pays $2200, we pay $500) and one option we suggested was to just increase our stipends by $2200 (not ideal but it's something), however, they said that this would result in a higher rate for tuition for each prof since tuition is tied to stipend. However, this issue is no longer at the forefront because we don't know what's going to happen to the ACA.