<p>I'm wondering what percentage of students take 4 vs 5 years to graduate? Which is more common now and why? Also is it considered "bad" if an extra semester or year is needed to graduate?</p>
<p>you can search grad rates by individual college on IPEDS.</p>
<p>Except at the most selective schools, it is common to take more than four years to graduate. Typical reasons:</p>
<ul>
<li>Part time attendance, which is more common with non-traditional students.</li>
<li>Semesters off school doing co-op jobs or other non-school activities.</li>
<li>Taking fewer courses than a full course load each semester, despite being a “full time” student.</li>
<li>Failing courses and needing to repeat them or make up credits in other courses.</li>
<li>Needing remedial courses due to poor high school preparation.</li>
</ul>
<p>The first two reasons are relatively benign (assuming that part time attendance is at partial costs).</p>
<p>Needing extra semesters or courses/credits attempted to graduate can result in unexpected costs; if you plan for eight semesters but take nine, that is an extra semester of costs (especially if financial aid or scholarships stop after eight).</p>
<p>Only to the person paying the tuition. Some programs are designed for 4.5 or 5 years. Especially those like teaching where a long field placement is part of the program or engineering co-ops.</p>
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<p>The student should not be paying tuition during a co-op semester during which s/he is not attending school (though s/he may be using some or all his/her paycheck during the co-op to pay for living expenses). So s/he may take nine calendar semesters to graduate, but be in school paying tuition during eight of them.</p>
<p>If a person is undecided and/or changes his/her major during college, it can add to the length of time needed to get a degree. Some programs (like architecture and occupational therapy) REQUIRE 5 years at a minimum. </p>
<p>We have one kid who took 4 years to get his electrical engineering degree (he entered with 60 credits and could have graduated a semester or two early but we told him not to rush). Our other kid took 6 years after HS to get her degree, including 3 semesters of CC and 4.5 years of college. She was undecided and declared her major late in JR year, which delayed her fulfilling graduation requirements.</p>
<p>Most of my other relatives have all gotten their bachelor’s degrees in 4 years. In some Us (especially with funding cuts to state Us), it can be difficult to get all coursework because of limited sections that have to be taken in sequence. This can require more semesters and/or years of study, sometimes working part-time and taking courses part-time while waiting for the required courses to be available.</p>
<p>Personally, I consider it “bad” if most students at a college require more than 4 years to graduate, and considered the 4-yr graduation rate an important college selection criteria.</p>
<p>*
Personally, I consider it “bad” if most students at a college require more than 4 years to graduate*</p>
<p>Some schools are more condusive to students with disabilities, or part time students, or students who take time off to travel or do research projects, so I was happy with a good graduation rate of 5 years rather than 4.</p>
<p>I’ved had 2 graduate in 4 years, but I’m being told plan on 5 or maybe 2 summer sessions + 4 for #3 who will be an engineering student. I’ve been told that now in writing (by the college) and in person by admissions.</p>
<p>Our engineering major graduated in four years and had a double major. She did have to take courses one summer (on HER dime) to be able to complete the double major. If she had been engineering only, she would have easily graduated in four years. And just FYI, she had no AP credits to lighten the load.</p>
<p>We parents paid for four years of undergrad study. Anything beyond that, our kids payed for. They both looked for schools where they could complete their majors in four years.</p>
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<p>Four year graduation rate tends to track admissions selectivity (more selective colleges tend to have fewer students who need remedial courses, cannot handle full course loads, or need to repeat failed courses) and list price (a high list price is a strong deterrent against a ninth semester at list price if scholarships and financial aid run out after eight), choosing a college on four year graduation rate selects for these characteristics.</p>
<p>Chronic or acute health issues can easily tack on more time to schooling, making the degree take longer than it would otherwise. I feels schools who handle these issues compassionately rather than requiring the student to withdraw commendable, even if it may somewhat extend the time it takes to obtain a degree.</p>
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<p>Note that 2 summer sessions is typically equivalent to a semester in terms of the number of courses or credits that can be taken. If summer sessions are needed, they should be considered during pre-frosh or frosh-soph summers, because common lower division courses are more readily available at local community colleges (i.e. less expensive). The soph-junior and junior-senior summers are often better used for summer jobs to gain experience; if the student needs to “catch up” on course work then, s/he may have to stay at the more expensive four year school (and even then, advanced course work is less commonly offered in the summer).</p>
<p>For individual risk of “extra time”, consider things like:</p>
<ul>
<li>How strong an individual work ethic the student has with school work (when there are not helicopter parents around telling him/her do to his/her school work).</li>
<li>How much useful AP and other credit s/he brings in (note that huge numbers of AP tests that some students accumulate may only translate into a much smaller number of useful ones; math is often the most helpful one for engineering majors).</li>
<li>How well the student did in key high school preparation for his/her major (for engineering, this generally means math and physics, sometimes chemistry; for all majors, this includes English reading and composition).</li>
<li>How likely the student will need remedial course work, based on the school’s interpretation of standardized test scores or the school’s own placement tests.</li>
<li>How much time the student will need to work to afford college.</li>
<li>How likely the student is to change major, or not decide until relatively late.</li>
</ul>
<p>I think that change of major, with little overlap in the required courses for the two majors, is one of the more common causes of needing more than 4 years to graduate. Essentially, anyone who changes into engineering as a major, and has not been following an engineering track all along, will probably need 5 years to graduate. Operationally, I have not seen post-graduation disadvantages for students who took 5 years, except that acquiring the degree itself will often cost more.</p>
<p>Some students also add a second major. Also- students at some colleges love being there and will plan to stay longer, especially if it is a cheaper public U. It is not an indication of a “bad” school. UW-Madison (Wisconsin) is an excellent school and if taking grad level courses in a top 15 department as part of the undergrad experience is bad…</p>
<p>However, public universities often want to get students to graduate as soon as they can, by imposing limits on credits or semesters that one can attend. For an in-state student, extra semesters or credits are like “taking more than one’s fair share” of subsidized higher education.</p>
<p>Example policies:</p>
<p>[Office</a> of Undergraduate Advising: Unit Ceiling](<a href=“http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/registration/unitceiling.html]Office”>http://ls-advise.berkeley.edu/registration/unitceiling.html)
[Office</a> of the President | PD 2009-05 | San Jose State University](<a href=“http://www.sjsu.edu/president/directives/pd0905/]Office”>http://www.sjsu.edu/president/directives/pd0905/)</p>
<p>California schools seem to have a much narrower margin of allowed credits that go over the number required for graduation,than schools I’m familiar with. Are schools really penalized that much?</p>
<p>The reasons I gave for taking longer than four years did not include earning more than the needed number of credits, but taking fewer classes a term in order to have time to work, pr take more challenging courses.</p>
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Don’t fall for it. Mine graduated easily in four years from a top engineering university with a 3.8 GPA and is now in grad school. My second also graduated easily in four years. My third, however, is on the six year plan, but it’s definitely not the school’s fault.</p>
<p>I view something like chronic illness to be an extenuating circumstance. Ditto any family crises like the death of a parent, loss of jobs, tetchy. These often do add time to the years in college. And just for the record…we would have paid for additional college time IF an extenuating circumstance had been present.</p>
<p>But if the school routinely graduates students in 4 years…as our kids’ colleges did…we expected them to do so. And we looked specifically for schools with excellent four year graduation rates.</p>
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<p>Think of each in-state student who stays extra semesters or takes extra credits’ worth of courses as taking up subsidized (by in-state tuition) space in the university that could be used for other in-state students.</p>
<p>For presumably similar reasons, Texas public universities offer in-state students an incentive rebate to graduate after having taken no more than 3 over the minimum number of credits to graduate (120 for most majors).</p>
<p>[College</a> For All Texans: $1,000 Tuition Rebate for Certain Undergraduates](<a href=“http://www.collegeforalltexans.com/apps/financialaid/tofa2.cfm?ID=447]College”>College For All Texans: $1,000 Tuition Rebate for Certain Undergraduates)</p>