Knowing what to expect in college for a workload is probably among the hardest things to guess because it all depends on the classes you are taking in a given semester, but looking at class structure can give you a great idea of what you are getting yourself into. If you know how you like to be assessed, even better! You can create your schedule to be tailored to you and you can prepare yourself for assessments that will be given over the semester in the form of exams, essays, and group projects.

I have yet to have a class that incorporates all three of these methods, however, I have found that science-heavy classes (without a lab) will be your heavy exam-based classes. Here, there are often so many students in the class that exams are the most efficient way for a professor to access your knowledge. On the other hand, humanities and lab courses have the most papers and essays because this is the easiest way for the professor to see if you can apply the knowledge you have discussed in class in a context that may not have a “correct” answer in ways such as the hard-core science classes. In terms of business-related classes, you will find the most group projects here. Professors in this realm like to try to emulate true team projects as you would see in the workplace, so they find that judging group project work and progress is the best way to access your knowledge in business-related classes.

What I have found to be my favorite is trying to have a good mix of these types of courses to keep my sanity as a student. In my freshman and sophomore years, I had a humanity-related general education class every semester that had me write papers or complete presentations. This was a good break from the exams from the hard-core science classes that are related to my field of study.

I found that I took this diversity in my schedule for granted this semester when I signed up for all science classes. There is no scheduled “exam week” or “midterm week” in college, so depending on the class, you can have an exam every 2, 3, 4, etc. week. For me, none of my classes were on the same exam cycle, so I have had an exam (or 4!) every week. This became terribly exhausting. I felt like I fell into the bad habit of cramming for exams and I wasn’t getting assessed to my full potential. Needless to say, I’m throwing some classes for my humanity-field minor into my schedule for next semester to prevent this from happening again!