Lawrence Boadi, a second-year Biology major at MCCC, took two summer courses: Spanish and Psychology, in 2021 and remembers how time-consuming those classes were.
“When you commit to a summer course you’re signing up for a course that is normally about 4 months of work compacted within 5-7 weeks. Finding time management and the right resources was the most difficult of all,” Boadi says.
Since there was so much work and time management that needed to succeed in those courses, Boadi says it had an impact on him mentally.
He says, “During my first summer course I was really stressed because I didn’t know how to manage my time and complete all my assignments whilst studying for the exams coming up. I would often find myself ranting to my mom or friends to get out of work.”
The thought of dropping the courses that were already paid for crossed his mind.
“Yes, I did [thing of dropping] on multiple occasions because I didn’t think I would be able to pass during the start,” he says.
The VOICE reached out to Nina May, Director of Institutional Research, Assessment & Planning at MCCC, to find out more about student pass rates during the summer.
From a data chart May provided, it appears that in 2019, the summer course pass rate was 78%. However, in 2020 and 2021 these rates dropped by 3% each year.
Scott Hornick, Coordinator of Music and ETT Music Technology, says, “In my experience, the summer classes tend to have more students looking to just get the C needed to transfer to earn their credit…but for the most part the passing rate is similar to the regular semester.”
Hornick says he thinks, most students who take summer courses are taking the courses that will give them more credits to get to graduation sooner. Sometimes there are also courses taken because they’re needed towards their majors, so it could be easier to get those out of the way during the summer.
However, when these expectations contradict what the summer courses are actually like, some students say they rethink their decision.
As Boadi explained how he initially wanted to drop out of his courses but stuck with it, there are students who can’t handle the pressure and do withdraw.
According to the data chart, in the last three years there was a 7-8% withdrawal rate from summer courses.
Hornick says, “So far I haven’t had many students drop out of the class. It does happen occasionally once they realize how much work needs to be done so quickly. I don’t blame them as it is a lot of work condensed into a tight window.”
Some students don’t seem to feel as much mental fatigue from taking summer classes.
Douglas Salata, an Education major, says, “There was some stress with my public speaking class because like I couldn’t decide a topic to do a speech on, but it wasn’t taking a toll on my mental health.”
Salata says he had free time during summer so he could balance work and school work.
“I mean I had work too, but I did my school work before work,” Salata says.
Even though he didn’t have the same experiences as Boadi, Salata says, “It does kinda suck when your friends are home doing things and you can’t hang since you have school work.”
