Two calendars running at different speeds
A 7.5-week session is a full course with the slack taken out. Run one in session A and one in session B and you are fine. Run two at once, which the structure quietly encourages, and you have two midterms in the same fortnight and two finals inside a month, on different clocks.
The overlap is entirely visible in advance and almost nobody maps it. So both sessions go on one page before anything starts, the weeks where the two courses collide get identified while there is still room to move work, and the lighter weeks are made to carry some of the heavier ones. When a course has to give, you decide which one, early, with the numbers in front of you.
- Both sessions mapped on a single calendar in week one
- Collision weeks flagged while assignments can still be moved forward
- The heavier course covered fully if you want to protect the other
- Weekly discussions and short assignments across either session
- Group deliverables: your share early, the whole thing if the group folds
- Writing-intensive work drafted against the rubric rather than the prompt
Team assignments with classmates you never meet
Scheduled calls across four time zones, a shared document three people never open, and one teammate who reappears the night before with something unusable. It is the most reliably frustrating part of an online program and it is graded as though everyone participated equally.
Your own portion gets finished early, so it exists regardless of what anyone else does. After that it becomes evidence management: set an internal due date two days before the real one, keep the version history of the shared document rather than pasting work into chat, and raise it with your instructor while the deadline is still ahead of you and something can be done. If the group has folded entirely, the whole deliverable can be picked up instead.
Proctored finals, said plainly
A remotely proctored exam is yours to sit. We do not take exams for students, we do not answer questions about room scans or browser lockdown, and we say that here rather than after you have paid. The reason is unglamorous: getting caught ends a degree permanently, and no fee is worth that trade.
What genuinely helps is preparing for the conditions rather than only the content. Sitting a timed practice paper on your own laptop, in the room you will actually use, removes most of what people call exam nerves. That is exam prep, and starting three weeks out beats starting three days out by an enormous margin.
A substantial paper in almost every course
Several programs here carry a substantial paper in almost every course, which is fine in isolation and brutal when two sessions overlap. The work is rarely conceptually hard. It is long, it wants current sources, and it eats the evenings your other course needed.
Those go to specialists in the subject rather than to general writers, drafted against the rubric rows first, with every reference checked to be sure it opens and says what it has been cited for. If you would rather write it yourself and have it read properly before submission, paper feedback costs less and often achieves more. And to be clear: NPGrads is independent, not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Arizona State University.
Send both sessions
Every course you're taking in A and B, and where you are in each. Priced within two hours.
See the collisions
One calendar, both sessions, with the weeks that break flagged while there's still time to move things.
Protect the one that matters
Hand over the heavier course or just the pieces that collide. Work lands early, and you get a weekly note.
Questions people actually ask
I'm taking courses in A and B at once. Is that too much?
It's manageable if the collisions are mapped and murderous if they aren't. The problem isn't total workload, it's that the two sessions run on separate clocks and their heavy weeks land together. Send both syllabi and you'll get one calendar showing exactly which fortnights break, plus what to move or hand over before they do.
My group project has stalled. Can you help?
Yes, and speed matters more than anything else here. Your portion gets finished straight away so it exists independently of the group, an internal due date goes in two days ahead of the real one, and the shared document's version history becomes your evidence. Raise it with faculty while the deadline is still ahead of you. If the group has folded, we can take the whole deliverable.
Can you take my proctored final?
No, and that answer doesn't change. Proctored exams are yours to sit and impersonation ends degrees permanently, which is a poor trade for one exam. What does work is rehearsing the conditions: a timed paper on your own machine, in your own room, plus drilling on whatever the practice attempts show you keep getting wrong.
How fast is 7.5 weeks really?
Fast enough that week one matters. There's no spare fortnight to absorb illness or a heavy stretch at work, and the major assignments are usually clustered rather than spread. Everything gets planned from day one with working dates ahead of the real ones, so a bad week costs you a bad week instead of the session.
Is this connected to ASU?
No. NPGrads is independent, not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by Arizona State University. Our specialists have worked inside these online courses for years, which is where the specifics on this page come from, and that experience is the only relationship involved. Nobody from here contacts your instructors or your program.
