I’m a current junior and I’ll very likely attend UT Austin next year (auto admit in state). If I do attend, I’ll have junior status due to accumulation of over 60 dual-enrollment credits by the end of 12th grade.
I wanna know if this is a bad thing, because I’ll have had two years without internships or co-ops while students who started as freshmen would have had more opportunities than I did, which would leave me with a bare resume for the next two years looking for job opportunities.
I wanna major in engineering or computer science. I know the markets for these majors are looking good, but would I still be at a disadvantage?
First off, UT requires that 60 hours be done in residence. So the very max you could claim is 60. Speaking of claiming, if you’re so worried about starting at a disadvantage - don’t claim them all. You won’t have any of your upper division and probably lower division major specific courses done which probably start sophomore year (depending how much of your basics you have done and how much they take). You should certainly do those before you even think about the job market. I personally don’t think you should start out in your junior year or even try because no one is going to be 100% their first year of college. Claim all of your basics for freshman year then use sophomore year to get adjusted and start lower division major specific course work then come junior year you can start slowly applying the rest of the credits you may have earned. Problem solved.
Don’t claim them all. I would recommend just claiming them in classes you don’t want to take, like if you hate English, or where you legitimately need to be placed at a higher level, like if you need to jump to a higher math.
Talk to your adviser about how and when to claim them, too. There is a strategy to it so you get the best time to pick classes.
Do you have financial pressure to finish early? If you can take the full four years, do so. College is short and your work life will be long. Don’t be in such a hurry.
Excuse me if I’m wrong, but aren’t dual-enrollment credits required to be submitted since it’s college coursework? I thought it was only AP/SAT II where you had the choice of claiming credit or not.
The above is correct, there’s no way to not claim your credits so you’ll be advised not to repeat classes that some would with AP credit. For ECE, if you took Calc and Physics, they will caution you to make sure you have a very strong foundation before moving on to upper division. For both CS and ECE you will start out with the lower division majors classes, so it’s not like you’ll have nothing to put on your schedule. But both will easily require 3 years regardless of your credits, due to the sequential nature of the coursework. (Aka you can’t just take 4 CS classes a semester to finish, some have to be taken alone). You might end up having to take a lot of electives to reach full time status each semester, so you could start exploring what you might do with them (certificates, study abroad, etc).