<p>"This is several decades ago, of course, but I graduated from Yale in three years, solely by using AP credits, and then went on to Harvard Law School.</p>
<p>I wanted to save my parents money, and, for reasons I can't quite remember at this point, I thought I was in a big hurry to finish college and get on with my life.</p>
<p>I regretted my decision almost immediately (I spent many weekends my first year of law school going down to New Haven to visit my friends who were seniors there), and I've wished ever since that I'd stayed in college the extra year."</p>
<p>DonnaL, except for the identity of the college and law school, I had exactly the same experience, with the same motivation -- and the same regrets.</p>
<p>My son entered USC with 24 credits--mostly IB. We did not use any of them. We wanted him there for a full four years so he could learn as much about his craft as possible. He also needed four years worth of growing up. It was a good decision on our part.</p>
<p>I graduated in 3 years by going taking 1-2 classes in each of 2 summers and being VERY careful with class selection. Looking back, I wish I had stayed that extra year and smell the roses along the way, but I was anxious to get out into the world and make "my own money."</p>
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It is smart of DADII and others to ask these great questions. I did not get the idea from the OP that he is looking for a 4th tier school for a top tier child just to get AP credits and can graduate early.
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<p>Hang around a bit, Crazed, and you'll find out that your definition of top tier schools and DadII's might be quite different. Don't expect him to look with great interest at any schools that happen to be located in ... Florida or Louisiana.</p>
<p>With great interests, I read all the responses. First of all, I would like to thank everyone for your time. To be honest, I knew most of what have been said but your examples just confirm my understanding. DD just finished her application process and I myself have an earned Ph.D. in Chemistry. </p>
<p>At this stage, I am just exploring all the options. I really don't know how competitive our DS will be in two years. He is very smart and has a decent but less than perfect GPA. </p>
<p>PS, there are several of you seem to know me better than myself do. LOL. </p>
<p>PPS, talked to DD who said with 100% certainty that she will enjoy her 4 full years. The good part, all that 4 years are fully covered.</p>
<p>One of my good friends at Carnegie Mellon finished a double major in Computer Science and Math in three years. I think he also managed to finish with a 4.0. He was a pretty stellar student, though, and he came in with ~120 units (40 credits) due to having taken tons of APs and CC classes in high school.</p>
<p>I finished in three and a half years, and wound up sticking around campus the spring semester while working for a professor full time. I think that way worked out really well since I could still hang out with friends, but I was actually making money instead of taking out $6k in loans for that semester.</p>
<p>If my son had gone to Purdue, he would have gone in with 71 semester hours of credit. 51 hours from 10 APs, and 20 credit hours earned at Purdue while in high school. He would have graduated in 3-4 semesters depending on course availability. He ended up going to a school that gives no credit for AP or college courses completed in high school.</p>
<p>I plan to graduate in three years partly because, assuming my yearly financial aid offer remains at least at what it currently is, my scholarships will be exhausted after three years.</p>
<p>Long story short, I plan to graduate in three years partly so I can go to college for free. :p</p>
<p>Incidentally, APs will only minorly help me graduate early; most of the help comes from being ahead in my major.</p>
<p>I can't think of anyone I know who graduated in 3 years offhand, but don't suspect it to be all that rare. I know people who have done it in one year (my cousin's husband and her older brother, whom I dated back when I was 19 and he was a 32-year-old self-made multi-millionaire) and two years, but am not sure about anyone I know personally having done it in three years. I got my bachelor's in 3.5 years with no AP classes and only one summer school class (one was all it took to decide I'd rather be at the beach, an amusement park, etc. rather than inside taking a class over the summer). Where some people here regret doing undergraduate school in 3 years, I can't say I regret having done it in 3.5 particularly, though I was having a mighty good time in undergraduate school and didn't much enjoy graduate school, but then I've enjoyed life since graduate school immensely, so all in all, I think I've had the same number of years of fun and a higher level of fun after graduate school than while in college.</p>
<p>The guys I know who graduate college in one year have no regrets of having done so as far as I can tell. The one I dated got his MBA and JD at the same time without either college knowing he was doing the other degree (as neither school would allow him to do both programs at their own U, so he had to do the degrees at different schools behind their backs) and so was rather well educated by age 22. My cousin's husband also got his JD at age 22 and the brothers began their own law firm (something that is rather unusual to do when so young) and in short order, owned the tallest building in their town of around 100,000 people (along with a bunch of other real estate). They both have been rather big supporters of our son's early college and early grad school path.</p>
<p>Someone noted that if you take a year off from college, you are tacking a year onto your work life as you will retire from work at 65 either way. That's not necessarily so. Many people retire without needing to concern themselves with government hits to early retirement. My cousin's husband retired in his 40's (though he decided he missed working and went back to working, but it had nothing to do with finances as he already owned over 1000 rental units plus a bunch of other assets and has been sitting pretty since he was in his mid or late-20's) . My brother finished medical school in 3.5 years (back when his alma mater allowed it, though he did have to pay tuition for a full 4 years, so it didn't save tuition money at all) and could have retired by 50 (as he was already a multi-millionaire) if he wanted. My guess is the people who can graduate college early can also retire earlier than the average college graduate. I gave up the rat race rather young and have been glad I did, but some other people LOVE their work and more power to them for never retiring even though they could have ages ago.</p>
<p>That's so wild! Harvard does not have that policy. They are somewhat discouraging though, pointing out that the student loses a lot of the undergraduate experience by graduating early. Isn't University of Rochester an extremely rigourous technically oriented school? My guess is that with so many physical science and engineering students, they get better results by enforcing the four-year rule.</p>
<p>I know a few people that graduated in 3 years, but I don't think it really accomplished much in any of those cases nor would I really recommend it. Some people are forced to do it purely for financial reasons, but I think most people would want to be there for the full term both for cultural reasons and academic reasons. </p>
<p>There really aren't any benefits from graduating early (nobody gives you a special scratch-n-smell sticker), but there is a lot of lost opportunity. The fourth year could be spent taking additional upper level or graduate courses, perform a much more in depth research project, or do one of many other things that will ultimately make one much more attractive and well-rounded for what comes next.</p>
<p>I disagree that there aren't any benefits to graduating early. Some off the top of my head include:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>An earlier start to an earlier retirement. As I noted earlier, age 65 isn't magical (both of my husband's parents took early retirement, and my mother died at 52 never seeing retirement at all, and none of us can know how long we will live to know if staying in school longer will cost us never experiencing retirement at all due to dying just before we could retire).</p></li>
<li><p>For those not on a full ride, a savings in college expenses. You sock that savings in investments and might get all the earlier to retire as you not only start earning more money sooner, you also have more to invest at the onset.</p></li>
<li><p>Not having to take longer in an environment you aren't particularly wild about (this one didn't apply to me, but it would apply to a lot of graduates I know who sadly didn't enjoy college).</p></li>
<li><p>Getting an earlier start in a career so you lower your odds of having to balance still being in school while having a family.</p></li>
<li><p>People thinking you are smarter than you are (which can be a pro or a con, but my guess is more would see it as a pro than a con, even if I see this as more a con than a pro). No, you get no scratch and sniff sticker, but people hear I finished my bachelor's at age 20 and finished my graduate school degree 1.5 years after that (at a different U) and get this impression that I am smarter than I am (people on CC are likely smart enough not to draw such a conclusion, but trust me, LOTS of people in the big world outside of CC do).</p></li>
<li><p>Perhaps an earlier time to get to move out on your own (my mother died when I was in my first semester of college at age 17 and my dad didn't know how to cook or pay the bills or you name it as my mom had done everything for him - include make more money in her job than he did as a physicist, but I wasn't going to pull up the slack there...anyway, I commuted to college and hoped my dad would eventually recover from his grief, which he did, and I managed to get him to propose to a great woman in time for me to move out to graduate school; I was glad to go out on my own finally rather than live at home another half a year as I would have done had I not graduated from college early).</p></li>
<li><p>More time to get in different experiences. Frankly, I don't see many people doing all too much differently the last year in college than they already did the first 3 years (usually they are in the same groups and organizations), so I feel an extra year "on the outside" actually could allow for more life experiences than sticking in college (though it depends, as I know lots of adults who do pretty much the same old, same old for decades rather than trying new things and places and groups and such).</p></li>
<li><p>Perhaps an earlier start to marriage and having a family. A friend of mine who also graduated in 3.5 years married the day after college graduation (to the boyfriend she made as soon as she entered college, and he had also graduated by the wedding) and they have gone on to have a very good life (they married about 25 years ago now) with five children (my friend gave up a lucrative career to homeschool them) and a big house with tons of bedrooms and a school room and a huge garage and such all designed and built by them (the husband owns a home building business). Lots of people today favor the late start to family, but I'm not sold on it being the best choice for mature people who have a good education already and are interested in moving on in life, especially as one never knows when one will get some illness that could lower or wipe out the odds of being able to have biological children and even if seemingly healthy, the odds of having a child with Downs (and perhaps other things) go up as a female ages and things like autism are now said to go up as a male ages.</p></li>
</ol>
<p>This isn't to say everything should try to graduate in less than 4 years. I don't think everyone should do that. But I think for <em>some</em> people, it works VERY well.</p>
<p>My D did have one full year's AP credit when she started college. She considered graduating in three years but we decided as a family that she could graduate with her class. However, we still saved considerable money by using her AP credits for her to take a one-semester leave of absense from her school in the fall of her junior year. During that time (as well as the previous summer) she worked in China. She was paid and given a free apartment and other perks including a daily Mandarin tutor.</p>
<p>In effect, she did her own junior semester abroad --- but made money rather than paying her school's hefty tuition for it. She got a wonderful experience in another culture and since many of her classmates were on traditional paid abroad programs she did not feel that she had missed a thing. </p>
<p>She also did several school-sponsored abroad January terms (one in Spain and one in Peru) so she did have those experiences as well.</p>
<p>We were a full-pay family and she was at a pricey private liberal arts college so the savings of one semester's costs were considerable. (I think the leave of absence fee was $50.) She graduated with her class and was on campus for the second half of junior year and all of senior year.</p>
<p>I believe her school has since made their AP credit policy less liberal now that so many kids show up with so many credits but for us this approach worked great. IMO working in a different culture teaches you at least as much as sitting in a classroom there. It surprises me that more families do not consider this approach.</p>
<p>"At this stage, I am just exploring all the options. I really don't know how competitive our DS will be in two years. He is very smart and has a decent but less than perfect GPA. "</p>
<p>Expand your mind beyond the top 20 schools, Dad II. You still seem to be bought into the immigrant mindset that those are the only schools worth thinking about or applying to.</p>
<p>Again, when it comes to graduating early, it is impossible to find an universal truth that covers all the variables. </p>
<p>However, I think that this discussion would be enhanced by looking at the benefits of what people refer to as taking a gap year. It's a similar debate about weighing the pros and cons of being in a hurry as opposed to take the time to gain experience and maturity.</p>
<p>More than one road leads to the top of the mountain.</p>
<p>Not everyone who graduates in less than 4 years is in a hurry, either. Some of us want to use that fourth year for pursuits, experiences, and maturation that staying in school for another year wouldn't give time for.</p>
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Expand your mind beyond the top 20 schools, Dad II. You still seem to be bought into the immigrant mindset that those are the only schools worth thinking about or applying to.
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<p>PG, where on earth you did you get that idea? What did I say in this thread that even remotely suggests that we are only thinking about top 20 schools?</p>
<p>Another option for people who want to quicken the pace--my brother and I graduated from high school a year early. Worked for us, though I know it's not for everyone.</p>
<p>Recently a friend's child graduated in 3 & 1/2 yrs at Georgetown. They stayed in their off campus housing for spring semester, got a small job, partied w/ friends who were still in class, particpated in May graduation and saved parents $15,000+ !!! Pretty smart idea...</p>