What are the Pros and Cons of Weed Out Courses?

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Ok, let me give more details then.
The 600 pages comprises of:
Vibrations and Waves, by French, the entire book; and Griffiths EM book, the first nine chapters of the 3rd edition. I actually think that comes out closer to 700 pages. It is typical to cover only 7 or 8 chapters out of griffiths in a semester course, or so I've heard. So what we did was roughly twice a normal workload. On top of that labs evey week, 3hrs in the lab and 15 page reports is nothing to smile at. Problem sets, about 5 to 15 problems, average half an hour per problem that gives more than 3 hours a week on average. Plus programming, althought there wasn't too much.

I know this is not the only intensive course in the world, there is the Harvard math 55 courses:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Math_55
which is more intensive yet, but those types of courses are usually not required for a major. This course I did is required for a major.
 
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Pythagorean said:
5-6 pages multiplied by four classes = 20-24 pages a day

Yes, but that's a statement about how many classes of equivalent difficulty one can take, not a statement about how difficult one's most difficult class is.
 


Pythagorean said:
5-6 pages multiplied by four classes = 20-24 pages a day
+ homework + work + lectures + family + vehicle/home maintenance

yes. I don't have a social life outside of my family.

Full-time students are expected to put in the equivalent of a full-time job toward time spend in classes and doing homework or studying, and that's assuming you're only taking 12 credits a term. If you start taking more credits, it's like picking up another part-time job (a lot of science majors carry 18 credits a semester). For each hour of lecture, you should expect to put in 2-3 hours of work at home for that course. If you have a lot of obligations outside of school, you may want to consider attending part-time instead of full-time.