“I took 5 courses in fall term 2023.” Is this sentence correct? Is “the” needed before “fall term”?

I would say “in the 2023 fall term.” Your construction sounds a little awkward.

You are missing both "the" and "of" "I took five courses in the fall term of 2023." would be a formal way of getting across who you are saying. A casual way would be "I took five courses in the fall of 2023." with term being implied.

So, I'd probably phrase it as, "I took five courses in fall 2023," if you wanted to leave the definite article out of the sentence. Most folks will likely assume the context of "fall 2023" to be in reference to an academic term/semester at a school or university. If you want to add the definite article, I'd probably say: * "I took five courses in ***the*** fall term ***of*** 2023." * "I took five courses ***during the*** fall term ***in*** 2023." The sentence you wrote in your post, whoever you'd be speaking or writing to would almost certainly understand you, as-is, though!

Here are some options which sound natural to me I took five classes in the fall. I took five classes in the fall of 2023. I took five classes during fall term. I took five classes, fall term 2023.

The phrasing sounds awkward here because "fall" is modifying "term", but "2023" modifies "fall term" as a whole. Adjectives normally come before the nouns they modify, so you'd call it "the 2023 fall term" instead.

In the fall term of 2023 would be better