[EricH]

Originally Posted by Manoel

One credit is approximately one hour of class (50 minutes for undergrad, full hour for graduate school). 30 credits means (approximately) 30 hours in class per week. Homework, although not common, and other extra-class activities are not counted there and are, well, extra-class.

The two-hour-of-study-per-hour-of-class-given tale is told around here too, though it's not really necessary, except maybe for harder graduate courses.

If homework wasn't counted, that would actually be about 10 credits here. (noting that it's a 1 credit/3 hours ratio) Using that calculation, one of our 18-credit loads would come out to about 6 credits of class time in Brazil (the other 12 are homework).

Some examples: a PE course or a lab course at my school is typically 1 credit. The PE course meets 3x/week at 1 hour/meeting, for 3 hours total, no homework. The lab course meets once per week for three hours, minimal prep time. But the main course with that lab meets 3 times a week (one hour at a time) and has about 2 hours of expected homework per meeting, for 9 hours per week (3 credits).

One note: Most professors won't assign 2 hours of homework per class. Per week, sure, but per class time? Let's just say they like positive feedback on student surveys. So it's really more like 2 credits (3 hours for class, 3 for homework), and an 18-credit load like I have now is closer to about 12-13 credit-hours--but plan for 18 anyway and use the free tie to watch a movie.

So Brazil has more class time, and America has more homework. Not sure what that says...