4e - what kind of rate of advancement is typical?

[Iron Sky]

In order to challenge our group our DM doesn't throw less than Level + 2 encounters against us, so we level up about every 5-7 combats. Some sessions are more RP-heavy, so we've had level-ups anywhere from 1 to 6 sessions (we leveled from 14 to 15 and 15 to 16 in one session each).

We're slated to play every Saturday for about 6-8 hours, though everyone seems to be busy enough in the last half-year or so that it's been more like 2-3 session a month. I'm bad with time, but we started at level 1 about 2-3 months after 4e came out and we're now level 16.

 

[Steve Jung]

In my Living Forgotten Realms experience, it takes about 2-3 adventures (~4 hours each) to gain a level.

 

[Hejdun]

I'm the XP tracker for our group, so this is something I look at quite a bit.

To reach 2nd level:
-3 sessions (varying length, average maybe 3 hours)
-1 skill challenge
-6 combats (2 of which were fought at once)
-1 independent trap
-0 quest rewards

To reach 3rd level:
-4 sessions
-1 skill challenge
-6 combats
-3 independent traps
-0 quest rewards

To reach 4th level:
-3 sessions
-0 skill challenges
-4 regular combats plus:
-1 insane combat (2,000xp+ worth of opponents in waves, most were reinforcements; call it 3-4 normal combats)
-2 major quest rewards
-2 minor quest rewards

It seems to be a pretty good progression. The only diversion from regular xp rules is that our DM gives out extra "role xp," for players doing things like tracking initiative, doing session recaps, tracking loot, tracking xp, etc, which comes to something like 50-75xp per session per player.