Multiple select statements in Single query

select RTRIM(A.FIELD) from SCHEMA.TABLE A where RTRIM(A.FIELD) =  ('10544175A') 
 UNION  
select RTRIM(A.FIELD) from SCHEMA.TABLE A where RTRIM(A.FIELD) = ('10328189B') 
 UNION  
select RTRIM(A.FIELD) from SCHEMA.TABLE A where RTRIM(A.FIELD) = ('103498732H')

If you use MyISAM tables, the fastest way is querying directly the stats:

select table_name, table_rows 
     from information_schema.tables 
where 
     table_schema='databasename' and 
     table_name in ('user_table','cat_table','course_table')

If you have InnoDB you have to query with count() as the reported value in information_schema.tables is wrong.

SELECT  (
    SELECT COUNT(*)
    FROM   user_table
) AS tot_user,
(
    SELECT COUNT(*)
    FROM   cat_table
) AS tot_cat,
(
    SELECT COUNT(*)
    FROM   course_table
) AS tot_course

You can certainly us the a Select Agregation statement as Postulated by Ben James, However This will result in a view with as many columns as you have tables. An alternate method may be as follows:

SELECT COUNT(user_table.id) AS TableCount,'user_table' AS TableSource FROM user_table
UNION SELECT COUNT(cat_table.id) AS TableCount,'cat_table' AS TableSource FROM cat_table
UNION SELECT COUNT(course_table.id) AS TableCount, 'course_table' AS TableSource From course_table;

The Nice thing about an approch like this is that you can explicitly write the Union statements and generate a view or create a temp table to hold values that are added consecutively from a Proc cals using variables in place of your table names. I tend to go more with the latter, but it really depends on personal preference and application. If you are sure the tables will never change, you want the data in a single row format, and you will not be adding tables. stick with Ben James' solution. Otherwise I'd advise flexibility, you can always hack a cross tab struc.