Seminary is vastly different than normal secular college. The early stages in Philosophy seminary are somewhat less intense. The seminarians always live together in a dormitory. Depending upon the set up of the seminary, they may or may not have duties around the dormitories for cooking, cleaning, yard work, etc. All seminarians participate in a structured life outside of class time, including time for recreation, daily prayers, mass, formation conferences and spiritual direction.
Theological seminary is almost solely focused upon spiritual and intellectual formation. They also usually live together and keep similar schedules for class, recreation, prayers, mass, formation and spiritual direction but they are often exempted from the manual housework that may be required of philosophy seminarians. Instead, they are often given pastoral assignments after their first year in which they get hands-on experience working in the various fields in which priests work: hospital ministry, catechesis, liturgical assignments, etc. In Theological seminary, the seminarian is often given more autonomy over portions of their schedule due to the rigors of taking 5+ Masters level courses a semester.
For most classes, there are final exams. This, however, are not the only grades required for the courses. Midterms are often used as a benchmark while other professors sometimes offer multiple unit tests throughout the semester. Writing is a heavy part of the classes, both during exams and in term papers for each class. While some professors offer projects or other ways to judge your practical knowledge gained in the class, many professors will require master level research papers from 3,000 to 10,000 words per course. Whatever Theology seminary class you will take, you always have to be prepared to write a lot.
For the most part, seminary classes are primarily a mixture of lecture and discussion. Professors aren’t interested in their students simply memorizing the information. Instead, their end goal is to provide the seminarian with a practical and working knowledge of the material so that they can further utilize that information in their priestly ministries. Quite often, lecture is punctuated with sizable portions of spontaneous discussion. The professors generally allow lines of questioning to exhaust themselves before returning to the lecture material (that is, if the professors are not on a time constraint to complete the course material).
At the end of the day, all seminarian professors understand that their class is only part of a whole and tend to discuss among themselves what assignments are due when for a specific seminary year level, so they are mindful not to overload the seminarian with assignments at any one time.
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