<p>Don't ask me why, just know I have certain circumstances that necessitate graduating in 3 years. </p>
<p>While difficult (and probably uncommon), it's possible at Stanford to graduate with a Bachelor's and a Master's in less than 4 years. Stanford seems to more readily accommodate students who want to graduate early (at least from the information I gleaned from their website). </p>
<p>Harvard on the other hand, seems a lot more rigid and places a lot more restrictions on its undergraduates. Is it even possible per Harvard policies? Are students barred? </p>
<p>^Read Advanced Standing. Just says you can graduate in less than 4 years with relevant qualifications, but doesn’t say anything about graduating early AND getting a Master’s. </p>
<p>First - congratulations on your acceptance!</p>
<p>Second - to answer your question - I don’t think so. There are a few programs that, with Advanced Standing, one can complete an AB/AM in four years (or so I’ve read - but no one seems to take advantage of these programs), but to graduate with both in less than four years, you’d have to take additional courses every semester. You can’t reduce the load by taking some courses and counting them for both your undergraduate and graduate degrees. As well, it would be difficult to get all the courses you need, as not every course is available every semester, and many courses are laid out with one course in the fall followed up by a second course in sequence in the spring. You’d wind up out of synch with the school’s schedule.</p>
<p>Also, you might drop dead from overwork. My older son’s roommate is joint-concentrating in two wildly different fields, and one of them has very strict curricular requirements. Because of that, he needs to take five or six courses each semester (four is standard). On days/nights that he sleeps, he typically gets less than three hours total. He’s becoming a physical wreck.</p>
<p>I’m not altogether sure they’d even approve your attempt. </p>
<p>As well, for many students, Harvard’s a lot of fun. </p>
<p>Stanford has very right restrictions that prevent anyone from taking more than 20 credits per quarter while not allowing any freshman more than 45 credits coming in. So at a minimum a freshman would require 3 years for undergrad and 2+ years if they had classes qualifying for 45 hours. A master’s requires an additional 45 hours.</p>
<p>Schools like Harvard and Stanford don’t believe in helping students graduate early. Their view is that college is a lot more than getting a bunch of credits to graduate and one has not had the full experience trying to breeze through classes if they have not spent time doing lots of other things while in college.</p>
<p>Being familiar with both H and S’s programs…actually @texaspg I believe @WooTheDay is talking about the co-terminal masters program which is popular among some of the more “time-sensitive” Stanford students…I believe Marissa Mayer the CEO of Yahoo graduated in 4 years with combined Symbolic Systems BS and Computer Science MS…and there are others that have recently been featured as well (forget their names)…it’s tough, but still much more viable under the quarter system…</p>
<p>@WooTheDay. If you can do it…then more power to you…And speaking of Tablo, I think that’s the reason why many of the Koreans (subversives) still doubt he attended or even graduated from Stanford with those degrees in that short period of time…he actually had to produce evidence to the Koreans who were falsely claiming he “could not have received” those degrees @-) </p>
<p>Just for giggles, I did this exercise for a concentration and a secondary, and it was impossible to do in 4 years without extreme course overload. As @Gibby suggested, you should contact Noël Bisson. I would say that IMO, all this is premature before even having set foot on the campus as a student.</p>
<p>2002 was a long time ago. I have friend whose kid graduated with an systems engineering degree and a masters in economics (or reverse) in 2005 in 4 years with no stress. If D or friends chose to a masters in some low stress fields, they could probably still do it in 4 assuming they kept all their high school credits along the way. But no one there is in a hurry to leave. </p>
<p>I know of several who have not left campus in 10-15 years and keep accumulating degrees! It is like they are living on Gilligan’s island with no way to leave. Given a chance, D would do the same. </p>
<p>@gravitas2 People like Andrew Luck stayed back 4 years despite having a huge income potential. So it must be them “start-ups”.</p>
<p>When I went to some parents’ meeting at beginning of freshman year, I met a couple who are on the alumni board. Their 5th or 6th kid was starting at Stanford and the first one had started 7 or 8 years before and was still there. Essentially all their kids were there at the same time from freshman to PhD candidates and they had not seen any other college.</p>
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