I really need help for universities

[aurore]

hi,
I'm doing search on the Japanese programs of American Universities and I really need help because I don't understand a single thing.
It is about Willamette university.
The informations are on this page : http://www.willamette.edu/cla/catalog/2 ... ml#japn314

I don't understand :
- how the credits system works (how many credits we have a semester),
- which courses we have to follow in 3rd or 4th year
- and if the list of courses is the requirements to enter in major japanese or the real list of courses that we follow.

so we can clearly say that I've understood nothing

In addition I'm not sure if "credits" in the USA means exactly the same thing as in France (in France we have 30 credits a semester). Can someone explain me? Is it possible to have 30 credits a semester in the USA (no matter the university)?

To finish, what s.h. (semester hour(s)) means?

thank you very much, I'm totally lost.

[two_heads_talking]

this is probably best brought up to the people at williamette university, not us.

http://www.willamette.edu/cla/catalog/2004/Sect3/aca.html#cr

but this link shows the credit and other information you might be looking for. I think 17 credit hours (17 hours of class per week) is considered a heavy load in the US. I hope that helps

[aurore]

I've asked to university people but... they answered without answering, if you know what I mean.
They've never given me clear answers to my questions.

[Yudan Taiteki]

That school seems to use a strange system -- usually one credit hour means one hour (usually more like 53 or 48 minutes) of class per week. So a 5-credit class would meet for five hours a week. At OSU, 15 credits hours seems to be considered a normal load. but that school uses an odd system because they refer to these 1-credit classes but they're clearly more than one hour a week. I don't know.

[aurore]

thank you
so if this 1 credit is an old "version" and that it doesn't mean 1 hour a week, can it mean that it worth more than 1 "actual" credit as well?

[HeyItsMatt]

aurore wrote:
thank you
so if this 1 credit is an old "version" and that it doesn't mean 1 hour a week, can it mean that it worth more than 1 "actual" credit as well?

Here's another useful page from the site:
http://www.willamette.edu/cla/catalog/2 ... .html#grad

In particular:
" All candidates for graduation with the Baccalaureate Degree must:
1. Satisfactorily complete 31 credits, of which no more than 2 may be earned in internships. At least 15 of these credits must be earned in residence. The final year of study shall be spent in residence or in Willamette-approved off-campus study programs. (Note: One Willamette credit is equal to 4 semester hours or 6 quarter/term hours)."

It looked to me from your original list of classes that each class is one credit (with the exception of a few in that list that were .5 or .25 credits), and that the classes are usually ~4 hours a week. I'm assuming this is what "semester hours" means although I'm not totally sure.

I graduated from Virginia Tech. From what I remember, each class here was usually 3 credits (occasionally 2 or 4 credits) and the 3 credits were equal to roughly 2.5 hours a week. Each class would meet either three times a week for 50 minutes, or two times a week for 1 hour and 15 minutes. I guess this varies from college to college, but it looks like it tells you how many total credits you need to get the degree (and what areas you have to take classes from). From looking briefly at the site it looked kind of like Tech, where you need to take some "core" classes unrelated to your particular major, and then take Japanese classes to fulfill the Japanese major.

Of course, if you actually decide to go there or to another college, you can always get more help from advisors who will tell you more about what you need to do in order to graduate. That's assuming they know what they're talking about, which mine didn't. So don't worry, it's not just you - I think college policies and requirements are unnecessarily confusing and arbitrary, to the point that even the advisors often seem oblivious to what's going on.

[aurore]

thank you very much for helping me
I've just received a mail from a teacher of willamette who wrote that "1 willamette credit" means 3 hours a week.
I think that if we presupose that "1 normal american credit" worths 1 hour a week, so willamette credits worth 3 time less that a "standard" american credit.

That's a quiet strange way to do things but I think that I'va finally understood how it works.