At MIT, some students take 8+ classes over ~15 weeks. This involves lots of busywork and an expectation of getting the highest grade (an A). [They also often do side projects.]
Scott Young aims to complete classes at the same rate. But he's skipping much of the busywork and requiring merely passing grades. I wouldn't be surprised if he pulls it off.
I'm an MIT student and currently spend 60-100 hours/class. Taking Young's approach, I could probably average 30 hours/class, which for 33 classes might be doable in about 2 months... Maybe doing 33 MIT classes in 1 month is something for a Tim Ferriss.
The pace I'm planning on sustaining (at least for the initial period) is roughly 1 class per week. I'm trying to go faster initially so I can do 2-3 weeks on later courses where I plan to do more project work.
You're absolutely right that cutting out the busywork makes my approach a lot easier than trying to do this in actual MIT classes. But that's one of the possible benefits of doing this streamlined approach to learning rather than in an institution, one of the tradeoffs I hope to discuss as the challenge progresses.
Scott H. Young is giving himself 12 months to complete MIT's computer science curriculum on his own, via MIT's OpenCourseWare.