@Michael *******
I'm at Duke now. Workload is intensive. I am in my 3rd month and would say the teaching has been great but the pace is rapid and there is constant testing at the end of each chapter. The longer i am with the school my feeling is it is more about test management rather than language learning. If i skip a day then I will struggle with the chapter test.
You'll be expected to do 15 hours a week classroom study plus I would say the same again on private study. Most people (including myself on the "journey 1" entry level class had a fair amount of thai vocabularly already (estimate 100-200 known words). I don’t have as much free time as I expected.
Visa management and admin however are excellent and they know their stuff. There is a lot of support especially with the first visa application. However there are tests to take and pass to continue with the ED visa. For 6 months of study you will certainly need to pass the MOE test after 3 months.