When many exhausted and overworked students think of the summer, they think of home-cooked meals, lazy afternoons with friends and a long-needed break from Boston's bone-chilling weather. But some industrious students are trading tanning lotion for textbooks, opting to participate in summer sessions both at Tufts and at other universities.
According to Sean Recroft, manager of summer sessions at Tufts, as many as 2,220 students are expected to take courses this summer, a number that appears to be increasing. "Enrollment has increased, but it's still too early to predict what will happen this summer," Recroft said. Approximately two-thirds of the students participating are Tufts students.
Tufts' summer program is composed of two six-week sessions. While a majority of courses terminate at the end of each session, a few courses, such as Introduction to Computer Science, span both. Most classes meet more frequently than during a fall or spring semester and often last for more than two hours at a time. Courses that place heavy emphasis on class participation, such as Elementary Chinese, may meet up to five times a week.
Students remain on the Hill during summer sessions for various reasons. Several factors prompted junior Joanna Drinane to take Seminar in Clinical Psychology over the summer. "I wanted to live here, and I don't think I could take [the course] anywhere else," she said.
Junior Jeffrey Kimm also had his reasons for taking courses during summer sessions. "[Summer sessions] made the rest of my years more flexible," he said.
From a financial perspective, summer sessions at Tufts can be a more affordable way to make progress toward a degree. Compared to the uniform tuitions that students must pay during fall and spring semesters, charges for summer sessions are based on the number of credits taken, which is about $1,750 per credit. Based on the model of a typical Tufts student taking four credits a semester, the cost of a credit during the academic year is almost three times higher than a credit earned during summer sessions.
But some students believe that the better value comes at the expense of quality. Udoaku Onyeador, a senior who took summer classes last year, thinks students who attend summer sessions at Tufts have fewer academic and social resources available to them. "The tutoring services are offered, but they're not as advertised [as during the academic year]," she said.
Adam Wright, a graduate student who took a physics class at Tufts over the summer, thinks the course was rushed and should have been taught by a professor, not a teaching assistant. "[I] didn't think [the summer course] was as high-quality as when [physics] is taught by a professor," he said.
Others feel that professors are able to offer more individual attention during summer sessions. Junior Swapna Maruri, a sociology major, enjoyed the smaller class sizes. Maruri took a class in nutrition at Tufts last summer to fulfill one of her requirements. "I thought the professor was really great and it was really interesting," she said. "Because there were fewer students, it felt really personal."
But not all students feel strongly about spending their summer in academia. Lydia Hochheimer, a sophomore majoring in Middle Eastern studies, hopes to spend her summer earning some extra cash. "I have to work at home during the summer, so I can't really stay in Boston," she said.
For those students who still want to spend a rent-free summer at home, another option is to attend summer classes at a nearby public university. While courses taken at state universities can be significantly less expensive than those taken at Tufts, transferring credits can be quite difficult. In particular, students who take courses at universities that operate on a trimester or quarter system are often faced with substantial problems when they try to obtain Tufts credits for their work.
Sophomore Leo Ashu is planning to take physics classes at Tufts this summer. Like many other Jumbos interested in applying to medical or dental schools, Ashu is taking classes over the summer so that he doesn't have to take two lab-based science courses in the same semester.
"It's hard to take two science classes at the same time, so I plan to take Physics 1 and 2," he said. He believes that other students joining him may be interested in getting ahead. "I'd say most people [taking summer courses] are interested in classes you can't take over the year ... I think a lot of people take [courses] here to have an easier course load over the semester."
Similarly, Hochheimer sees why other students would spend their summers at Tufts. "I think [summer sessions] are good for people who are double majoring or taking something they can't take during the academic year," she said.
