>>18
I believe both myself (>>17) and the OP (>>1) are just referring to language courses, not entire schools of study. In other words, our main focus is something else, with Japanese being merely recreational, or filling a requirement. That would certainly explain the discrepancy in learning pace.

>I don't see any way to load so many kanji into short term memory and pass a test and forget them after

Believe me, I know all too well that you can cram for a test during a week, but then 2 weeks later you've forgotten 75% of what you previously "learned."

There are only 14-16 weeks in a semester, but there are two semesters in a year, so in a year of study you would have 28-32 weeks of class, which would be enough time to learn almost all the kanji, wouldn't it? (assuming you kept up the pace of 50 per week the whole time).

Thank you for the textbook reccommendation, could you tell me though, does it use much romaji? I would prefer that it didn't, but I don't know of any place to find a copy to look at before I buy.