In American universities, students can choose courses across majors, grades and teachers.
The American education system attaches great importance to the cultivation of students' personality, so American universities offer hundreds of courses for students to choose from every year. Because of the different educational systems between China and the United States, foreign students who have just entered American universities will feel at a loss.
Learning how to choose courses in American universities has become one of the compulsory courses for every international student. Scientific and reasonable curriculum planning is related to the GPA of the whole university. Improper course selection may lead to insufficient GPA and face suspension from school in the future. In addition, GPA also plays an important role in applying for a master's degree or looking for an internship/job.
Generally speaking, American universities implement general education in freshmen and sophomores, and students are uncertain about their majors when they enter universities. This is to enable students to fully contact humanities, arts, social sciences, mathematics and other disciplines in the undergraduate stage, establish a complete knowledge system and achieve all-round development.
Credit setting in American universities:
The credit setting in American universities is mainly divided into semester system and semester system.
Semester system: each academic year has two semesters, September-65438+February is the autumn semester, and June-May is the spring semester, and each semester is about 16 weeks. Because of the long summer vacation, students can choose whether to attend classes or arrange exchange programs with universities in other countries according to their own conditions.
Most American universities adopt the semester system, requiring students to complete 120- 128 credits before applying for graduation, and at the same time, they need to complete 15 credits or more each semester. Students should have no less than 12 credits and no more than 18 credits per semester. If it is exceeded, they need to apply for and pay extra tuition fees. The representative schools are Harvard University and Yale University.
School season system: a school year is divided into four school seasons, September-65438+February is autumn season, June-March is winter season, April-June is spring season, and July-August is summer season, among which three school seasons are study weeks, and each school season is about 10 week. Representative schools include Stanford University, University of California and University of Chicago.