i graduated high school June of 2017 and I wanted to go straight to college in which my graduating year would be 2021. But instead, what went down went down and basically took a gap year. But this year I’ll be starting college as a freshman for the Summer Semester of 2018. and this year I’m starting school. Considering I’m a year behind and I’ll be starting for the Summer semester (which means 2022 will be my graduating year)… what would I have to do to catch up to my graduating class of 2021? Can i catch up if i wanted to? What would be my exact steps of getting there? I’m curious…
Plenty of people take one (or more) gap year(s). Your graduating class isn’t 2021; it’s 2022. Sometimes you’ll be able to graduate early, but this isn’t always feasible and it’s something you would have to talk to your advisor about. My best advice is don’t think of yourself as “a year behind” and think of yourself as right on track to graduate on time with your cohort (those entering in 2018).
You’d likely have to take summer semesters when possible and maybe a semester where you tackle more than the typical number of units. The max for some colleges might be something like 18 units and you’d take more units instead. Some schools might not pay for these extra units though as they aren’t covered in tuition costs. At my school (USC), the cost was not covered. There was a program where students with a certain GPA for a given number of semesters could enroll in more than 18 units for free, but given that I was a transfer student, I didn’t really have the time to establish that kind of record by the time I had my 20 unit semester.
For me, I was admitted as spring 2016 transfer. I wanted to graduate spring 2017 and participate in commencement. I took classes summer 2016, an overloaded fall 2016 semester, and I still had to take classes in summer 2017. It was only one course, but it was more difficult than I thought trying to make up for the regular semester that I felt I was “robbed” of. In the end, I somewhat regret this decision. I tackled way too much and my GPA did suffer in some cases. I had no chance to enjoy my summer. The summer session started like a week after the end of the spring semester and ended shortly before the fall semester started. My advice would be not to rush things like I did, but if this is something you want to do, your path would be similar.
tldr; multiple summer sessions and possibly semesters with overloading as not all courses are typically available during the summer.
Once you graduate high school, any sort of a timeline is out the window.
You’ll graduate once you’ve finished your coursework. There’s no need to worry about the timeline that others are on.