<p>My incoming freshman daughter is required to have a minor and to spend a year abroad in addition to completing her many distribution requirements and the courses needed for her major. </p>
<p>Can a student possibly do this in four years, or are we looking at a five-year plan, do you think? She will have quite a few AP credits...</p>
<p>A lot would depend on whether the year abroad will give her course credits in her major or minor and just how many "quite a few" is.</p>
<p>Kind of hard to answer without knowing the requirements for the major. A full year abroad is going to be a challenge for an engineering major and difficult for most science majors.</p>
<p>As long as she is racking up major and minor requirements during the study abroad program, it shouldn't be that tough in the social sciences or humanities.</p>
<p>It's really hard to know without knowing basically all the information (how many courses her major is, how many her minor is, how many distributions she'll have to complete, how many credits it take to graduate and how the school handles study abroad credits). It's hard for me to imagine that the school would require something that is impossible to compete in 4 years, but of course it might still be very challenging. </p>
<p>In the more general sense it certainly is possible. If I decide I want to, I'm on track to double major and study abroad for a whole year, and (because Wellesley has such strict rules about them) my AP credits haven't played that much of a role. One of my potential majors also has very strict rules about which classes must be taken at Wellesley and which classes can be taken away (essentially, 2/3 of the major requirements have to be taken at Wellesley), so there's a fair bit of hoop-jumping involved. We also have distribution requirements to fulfill, and I'm only a few classes away from doing so. Definitely start planning now, I would say, because a lot will depend on your daughter taking prerequisites in a timely fashion and finessing her distributions (knocking out two with one class, or selecting other required courses carefully so as to fulfill distributions).</p>