Benefit of having more than required courses on a Ph.D. transcript

Question

I am in the second year of my Ph.D. in computational Physics I have already fulfilled the course requirement according to the university doctoral school. However, I am interested in two more courses that are being offered this semester. I am planning to take them. I mentioned these two courses to my advisor and he said that they could be helpful for my research. He said that it's up to me if I want to properly register for these courses or just sit in class without registration and learn the course content.

I am wondering what is the impact of having more than required courses on a Ph.D. transcript? I will be learning these courses in either way. If I don't register, I would not be bound to take final exams (a little relief). But if having more courses on a Ph.D. transcript shows a positive feature (for a job or postdoc position), I would not mind taking final exams.

Answer 1

Once you have your doctorate people are very unlikely to care which courses you took to get there. Especially in academia, though there might be some value for a specialized industrial job.

The trick, however, is whether sitting in will give you enough incentive to learn the material enough to benefit your research. Probably it will, based on your question, but some people need a goad to work hard.

If the knowledge will be helpful and you can put in some effort, then I'd suggest just sitting in (or auditing) would be best. You don't want additional courses to actually interfere with your research.