How much time should I spend studying?

[Learnphysics]

Ever since getting to University (2nd year Mechatronic Engineering now), i find my grades.. or performance in exams/assessments to have fallen since high school.

Upon closer inspection, I'm starting to think I just don't put enough time into studying. The course I do features about 23 hours worth of lectures/tutorials/labs during a working week, and roughly 6 hours of assigned 'homework' a week.

I find myself doing the bare minimum (or less if i can finish earlier) of this, and not actually committing any time to simply sit down and 'take a subject in' with no goal (eg meeting a due date.)

So I'm wondering for a something like Engineering how much time should i be devoting weekly to independent study?

 

[Angry Citizen]

How much have your grades fallen? Anyone who expects high school grades in college is bound for disappointment.

 

[chez_butt23]

Look bro, school is a 40 hour per week job at least. You need to start putting in the time.

Best of luck.

 

[Sankaku]

The course I do features about 23 hours worth of lectures/tutorials/labs during a working week, and roughly 6 hours of assigned 'homework' a week.

Everyone is different, but I think a good general rule is a minimum of one hour at home for each hour in class/lab.

However, do as much work as you need to do as well as you want. If you are only doing the 'minimum,' are you getting your money's worth out of the course? Education is a privilege - don't waste it.

 

[Pengwuino]

Everyone is different, but I think a good general rule is a minimum of one hour at home for each hour in class/lab.

However, do as much work as you need to do as well as you want. If you are only doing the 'minimum,' are you getting your money's worth out of the course? Education is a privilege - don't waste it.

The general rule I have always seen is 3 hours per lecture hour. So if you're taking 15 units, that corresponds to about 45 hours outside of class. Of course, realistically the load every week is not constant and there are easy GE courses if you're in the US/Canada which don't require much effort, etc.

I do strongly agree with the second statement here. You're paying a lot of money probably and devoting many years of your life to this venture in the hopes that it'll put you into a job you love in the field. Why try to do the bare minimum?

 

[erok81]

The general rule I have always seen is 3 hours per lecture hour. So if you're taking 15 units, that corresponds to about 45 hours outside of class. Of course, realistically the load every week is not constant and there are easy GE courses if you're in the US/Canada which don't require much effort, etc.

I do strongly agree with the second statement here. You're paying a lot of money probably and devoting many years of your life to this venture in the hopes that it'll put you into a job you love in the field. Why try to do the bare minimum?

I'll agree with both points here. The one hour per class rule is way too little. I can't imagine fully learning a subject with only investing that few hours. Although, I would have a lot more spare time if I did that.:tongue:

 

[johng23]

Well, 3 hours per lecture hour sounds high to me. That would have been something like 5 hours of studying/homework a day every day of my college career. I definitely didn't do that in an average week. I'm sure the last couple weeks of every term bumped the average up a bit, but probably not to that level.

Everyone is different. If you're trying to look for a general rule, you're doing it wrong.

 

[bcrowell]

The standard recommendation I've always seen is 2 hours outside of class for every lecture unit. Of course this will vary depending on the class, the student's aptitude, etc.

 

[lisab]

The standard recommendation I've always seen is 2 hours outside of class for every lecture unit. Of course this will vary depending on the class, the student's aptitude, etc.

That rule of thumb worked very well for me, generally. It was more like 3+ hours for upper division core classes, though.

 

[Mororvia]

I believe the proper answer here is you should spend as much time as necessary to learn the material. For some classes and/or semester that may be 3 hours per lecture. For others it may be 1 hour.

Clearly you're not doing as well as you think you should be so that either means that you're not studying enough... OR... you're not studying properly. If more time investment does not do the trick, I'd ask someone at your school to help with how you study.

 

[Pengwuino]

Yup the point is, C students spend X amount per day studying, A students spend Y amount per day. Y > X and you decide which you want to be.

 

[AlexChandler]

For me to do well, I have found that it requires just a tiny bit less than the very maximum amount of work that I can possibly handle. I think a good general rule is to just work really hard all the time.

 

[AlexChandler]

You spend 112 hours awake every week. If you have 23 hours of class and do 6 hours of homework.. what are you doing with the other 83 hours?
Even if you subtract 5 hours every day from this to take your time eating, driving, walking etc... you still have 48 extra hours that you could spend studying.
That is quite a lot of time every week. It would be good to spend some of it studying.
It may be a good idea to try and come up with a sort of budget for your time.

 

[Sankaku]

The general rule I have always seen is 3 hours per lecture hour.

I generally agree. In my post I did say a minimum of 1 hour (which seems to be much more than the OP is doing now). Personally, I tend to do a lot more than the minimum for everything in life...

:-)

 

[zif.]

The general rule I have always seen is 3 hours per lecture hour. So if you're taking 15 units, that corresponds to about 45 hours outside of class.

I've always been told that it's 3 hours per credit, *total*, per week.

I know last semester I was taking 21 credits and from the logs we were required to keep I spent an average of 50 hours per week on school.

This is 13 hours short of what is recommended and I feel that explains why I was at ~3.5 GPA last semester instead of at or above 4.

 

[Pengwuino]

I've always been told that it's 3 hours per credit, *total*, per week.

Yah, 2-3 hours is reasonable. I think the general idea is that you shouldn't expect to spend just 2 hours a week total on any class :P

 

[chiro]

Ever since getting to University (2nd year Mechatronic Engineering now), i find my grades.. or performance in exams/assessments to have fallen since high school.

Upon closer inspection, I'm starting to think I just don't put enough time into studying. The course I do features about 23 hours worth of lectures/tutorials/labs during a working week, and roughly 6 hours of assigned 'homework' a week.

I find myself doing the bare minimum (or less if i can finish earlier) of this, and not actually committing any time to simply sit down and 'take a subject in' with no goal (eg meeting a due date.)

So I'm wondering for a something like Engineering how much time should i be devoting weekly to independent study?

Do what you have to do. If you do all of your homework (problem sets and so on) with ease, then its probably a good indicator that you know what you're doing.

If not, then make use of your available resources. They may include your friends, your TA's, lecturers, course coordinators (in their consultation time), forums (like this one), google, other books and so on.

If for example, you did all your problem sets with ease and come exam time you absolutely got hammered, then I would go to the coordinator and have a serious chat. If you're wondering about that even happening, I would go and talk to the coordinator in person. They will probably give you a clear idea of what they expect and may even give you more problems to do.

The world is your oyster, make what you can of it.

 

[Femme_physics]

Don't measure it by hours, measure it by love. How much love are you giving the subject? Mechatronics is a beautiful profession, I would want to give it as much as I got, because it rewards back with a massive engineering knowledge. My college study schedule is about half as many hours as yours, and I usually do many study marathons on my own that can take hours on end. You're second year, by now it should be a lot more fun, no? :)

I wouldn't time myself if I were you, I'd just "lose" myself in the concepts I'm studying.

 

[chiro]

Don't measure it by hours, measure it by love. How much love are you giving the subject? Mechatronics is a beautiful profession, I would want to give it as much as I got, because it rewards back with a massive engineering knowledge. I study much less per week (half as many hours as you do) and I usually do many study marathons on my own. You're second year, by now it should be a lot more fun, no? :)

I wouldn't time myself if I were you, I'd just "lose" myself in the concepts I'm studying.

Great advice :)

 

[micromass]

Indeed, it's silly to time yourself on the amount of time you study. You should study until you understand everything. If you can do your homework with ease, then try some additional (hard) problems. If you can solve them, then you understand the concept and you've studied enough.
If you struggle on your homework and you can't keep up with class, then you're not studying enough.

Like others have said: you're paying a lot of money for education. Don't waste it and study enough. Education is like a full-time job, really. You can spend all week partying, but then you'll waste it all...

 

[ManiFresh]

I take 24 units so that means i should be studying about 10 hours a day apart from the classes i take? No.Way.

If we only include the lectures that's about 45hrs - over 6 hours a day. That's sounds quite a lot actually. This would mean all i do is study. Do we include the lectures and tutorial classes or exclude them from the 45hrs??

 

[Ryker]

I concur with both those that gave you a rough outline of 2 - 3 hours per each hour in class, as with those that say you can't really go by hours. If you're not doing as well as you want, you obviously need to crank it up a bit, but on the other hand, don't go about it by choosing an overkill number of hours, and then drilling yourself to death. So try and study more (because that seems to be what you see as needed, right?), but also try to strike a balance where this isn't going to be all you're doing.

 

[bcrowell]

I take 24 units so that means i should be studying about 10 hours a day apart from the classes i take? No.Way.

Yes. Way.

If we only include the lectures that's about 45hrs - over 6 hours a day. That's sounds quite a lot actually. This would mean all i do is study.

Yep. You're describing taking roughly double a full load. That means all you should be doing is studying.

Do we include the lectures and tutorial classes or exclude them from the 45hrs??

The standard rule of thumb is 2 hours outside of class *in addition to* every hour in lecture.

 

[AlephZero]

If we only include the lectures that's about 45hrs - over 6 hours a day. That's sounds quite a lot actually. This would mean all i do is study.

Not true. 8 hours work and 8 hours sleep a day still leaves you 8 hours of playtime.

If you were doing 90 hours work a week instead of 45, you might start complaining, but even that wouldn't kill you.

 

[Klockan3]

Yes. Way.

Yep. You're describing taking roughly double a full load. That means all you should be doing is studying.

The standard rule of thumb is 2 hours outside of class *in addition to* every hour in lecture.

But different people need different amount of time for each course, that is his point. You can't just throw rules like this at people, they just apply to the average student taking the course and only if it is a hard course.

 

[Ryker]

That's why he should take them as guidelines and starting points, and adjust accordingly. If he sees he doesn't need that much study time, then he should definitely not study just for the sake of studying, and pursue something that interests him more. On the other hand, if it's not enough, then either he needs to crank it up a notch or reevaluate his expectations pertaining to his grades.

And Klockan3, as someone having done his first degree outside of the US, I had the same opinion about hours of study needed outside class as you do now. The ratio was probably 1:2 (that is, one hour of study per each hour of class time) or maybe 1:1 if the course was extremely hard, and I still managed to graduate as one of the top students. But studying in Canada now has changed that thinking and I do think this general advice isn't that far off. There's namely less hours spent in class and more busywork to be done here on top of actually having to learn stuff (both of which I take to be the same in the US). While in Europe you're not going to have to bother with homeworks, you do have to here, and just because you can do the homework doesn't mean you know the material. So you have to make additional room for studying and it takes time.

 

[micromass]

I take 24 units so that means i should be studying about 10 hours a day apart from the classes i take? No.Way.

If we only include the lectures that's about 45hrs - over 6 hours a day. That's sounds quite a lot actually. This would mean all i do is study. Do we include the lectures and tutorial classes or exclude them from the 45hrs??

Education IS a full-time job. You'll have to work as hard as you can to achieve your goals. Everybody does...

 

[Klockan3]

And Klockan3, as someone having done his first degree outside of the US, I had the same opinion about hours of study needed outside class as you do now.

It is not like Europe got a set standard either, and I was more focusing on the total amount of work per week for a set amount of courses and not dependent on lecture hours. Also, I am curious, what did you study in Europe and why did you decide to take another undergrad?

The ratio was probably 1:2 (that is, one hour of study per each hour of class time) or maybe 1:1 if the course was extremely hard, and I still managed to graduate as one of the top students. But studying in Canada now has changed that thinking and I do think this general advice isn't that far off. There's namely less hours spent in class and more busywork to be done here on top of actually having to learn stuff (both of which I take to be the same in the US). While in Europe you're not going to have to bother with homeworks, you do have to here, and just because you can do the homework doesn't mean you know the material. So you have to make additional room for studying and it takes time.

Considering that in the US you have a lot of forced gen-ed that are often easy when I said "hard" i meant those that are pertaining to your major, so maths/physics in this case. The reason I used this terminology is because that is how many undergrads think of the courses.

Also if we take me as an example, I got an almost perfect long term memory. This is a quite rare thing to have and it allows me to learn things permanently from just hearing it a few times. It works for most things such as concepts, solution strategies and formulas. If I sit watching someone doing a solution I can then solve it too, so I basically didn't have to study at all. The worse long term memory someone has the more they will have to study, among humans you can find people in all parts of the spectrum between people with a memory even better than mine and amnesiacs. You can't expect people on different parts of the spectrum to study the same amount of hours for the same course load and the amounts can vary quite wildly.

 

[I like Serena]

Ever since getting to University (2nd year Mechatronic Engineering now), i find my grades.. or performance in exams/assessments to have fallen since high school.

Upon closer inspection, I'm starting to think I just don't put enough time into studying. The course I do features about 23 hours worth of lectures/tutorials/labs during a working week, and roughly 6 hours of assigned 'homework' a week.

I find myself doing the bare minimum (or less if i can finish earlier) of this, and not actually committing any time to simply sit down and 'take a subject in' with no goal (eg meeting a due date.)

So I'm wondering for a something like Engineering how much time should i be devoting weekly to independent study?

Actually, it is normal for your grades to have fallen.
In my own field my fellow students and myself scored on average about 2 points lower than we did in high school [edit]on a scale from 1 to 10 which we use where I come from[/edit].

The material is more difficult and the speed at which it is taught is much higher.

I think that if you would check with your fellow students that you'll find you're not the only one.

I find it is also difficult to keep loving the study, when you're stringed along in classes, and feel as if always a couple of steps behind, and have to run and scamper just to keep up.

I find it helps to find a project or section of class material, that you find interesting, and turn that into a kind of marathon for yourself. Not so much because you need to pass the exam, but trying to simply enjoy the material if you can.
For myself I find enjoyment in helping others with their material and becoming better at it myself. The interaction and feedback helps immensely to enjoy the material.

 

[Ryker]

It is not like Europe got a set standard either, and I was more focusing on the total amount of work per week for a set amount of courses and not dependent on lecture hours. Also, I am curious, what did you study in Europe and why did you decide to take another undergrad?

Yeah, I know Europe doesn't have a set standard, but there are some similarities between most countries, at least as far as contrasting those characteristics with the US/Canadian system. But to answer your first question, it was Law, and for the second, it's because I can't do Physics with it

 

[Sankaku]

Also if we take me as an example, I got an almost perfect long term memory.

If he had perfect memory, he wouldn't be here asking for advice. Your personal situation may not be applicable.

 

[Klockan3]

If he had perfect memory, he wouldn't be here asking for advice. Your personal situation may not be applicable.

I am always torn on these issues, I want to believe that people can do this like I do but I have noticed that in general it is much easier to help people under the assumption that they can't. But to me it seems derogatory to just assume that everyone is "dumber" till they prove otherwise so I usually start with the assumption that they can work like me and then I adjust from there.

But on the other hand when you put a standard like that then you implicitly say that those who don't live up to it are bad. But I love discussing questions concerning learning, didactics etc, much because I really can't stop believing that people can absorb material like I do if they just did things differently, or at least much better than they do today. I don't believe that it should take 40 hours a week for anyone just doing some undergrad classes.

But yeah, that is just an ideal dream. You won't solve todays problems thinking about how you want things to be tomorrow.

 

[Archi]

Wow fairly honest answers. I was expecting replies like "It only takes me 30min to read and understand every concept in every textbook I have ever read." ;) Yeah 2-3 hours study per week for every lecture hour is a great rule of thumb. That amount of time is a realistic goal, and enough to make it quite difficult to get behind.

 

[TeacupPig]

Personally, I find it impossible to study more than 8 hours a day over any period that is longer than a few weeks. When there are no lectures, I usually do about 6 hours (e.g. doing research [theoretical] or preparing for an exam). My habit is to go to university for about 8 or 9 hours a day and then use about 2-3 hours of that time to take some breaks.

Numbers in the region of 10hours+ sound really unhealthy to me, even if it is lab work. And I wouldn't believe any theoretician who claims doing more than 8 hours of productive desk work (should be comparable to regular studying). Anyway, most students I know do considerably less (even if they won't admit it)

Well, if you want to work more, I think the best way is to work e.g. 6 hours every day. 42 hours of good work (no distractions, no hang-over etc.) should be enough to get the most out of your potential.

 

[lisab]

Wow fairly honest answers. I was expecting replies like "It only takes me 30min to read and understand every concept in every textbook I have ever read." ;) Yeah 2-3 hours study per week for every lecture hour is a great rule of thumb. That amount of time is a realistic goal, and enough to make it quite difficult to get behind.

We do get that sort of thing from time to time. Sure, there are a few people out there who can do very despite minimal time spent studying. But most of us mere mortals really have to work for it .