Hi, I have 50 units of credit going towards my major. I got admitted to Elanor Roosevelt College and was wondering if it is at all possible to graduate in 2 years. My major is electrical engineering.
As an incoming freshman? I highly, highly doubt it. It all depends on what you have credit for, but if nothing else, you need 180 credits to graduate. With 50 units of credit, you go down to 130 credits, which is about 21-22 units per quarter (students typically take 16 units/quarter). And that would be primarily upper-division, rigorous coursework. You could take summer courses, but there is no guarantee that the courses you need will be offered in the summer. Even if you could handle that every quarter, you likely wouldn’t be able to schedule all of the classes you need into that short of a time period. But it’s also possible that not all of the credits you have would actually count for courses that you need to graduate (for major and GE requirements), so there are likely more than two year’s worth of courses that you still need to take.
You can look at all of the requirements you need to complete yourself and see if you can complete it in two years. You can always try it if you really want to, but if you find that you can’t handle it, then you can spread out the courses more.
If you can afford it, you would do much better staying the extra couple of years, getting a higher GPA, and doing internships during the summer or during the year than rushing through in 2 years. If you can’t afford more than two years, then you would probably do better looking for a more financially feasible school.
I just recalculated my AP credits. I have 62 actually. Also, I would be willing to take summer sessions as there is a 15 week summer break for UCSD. Plus, my major would be Electrical Engineering and Society.
The number of AP credits means nothing, it will be how many of these credits will they accept for GE’s and pre-req’s toward your degree that will matter. During orientation you will meet with an advisor and be given a personalized list of classes needed to finish your major based on these credits. You can then Map out your courses to see if you can accomplish your 2 year goal. Also need to remember, many upper division classes are not offerred in Summer and some are offerred only a few quarters a year.
- Take a look at http://plans.ucsd.edu to see what you’d have to take without AP credit. Print this out.
- Head over to http://roosevelt.ucsd.edu/_files/academics/AP%20IB%20chart%20v6.15.09.pdf and determine which courses you don’t need to take/have already fulfilled.
- In a Word document, rearrange your four year plan by distributing yourself 5 classes per quarter instead of 4. Use the past schedules of summer classes at https://act.ucsd.edu/scheduleOfClasses/scheduleOfClassesStudentResult.htm to see if you can add columns for summer and redistribute some of your courses there.
- Realize you’re still gonna need at least three years.
- Cry.
It’s even less likely, if you’re only talking about AP credits. Again, it depends on what you’re actually getting credit for. But at most, for classes required by your major or GEs, you would could get credit for MATH 20AB (with a 5 on AP Calc BC), CHEM 6A (with a 5 on AP Chem), PHYS 2AB (with a 5 on AP Physics C), your foreign language requirement (with a 4 or 5 in an AP language), your fine arts requirement (with AP Art Studio or Art History), and potentially some of your regional specialization requirement (with something like AP US History). That leaves you with about ~6-7 requirements for your ERC requirements, ~12 lower division courses for your major requirements, and ~17 upper division courses. That’s about 140 units of courses you have to take. Let’s say that scheduling is a non-issue (even though scheduling will likely be an issue when your trying to cram extra classes), and let’s say that prerequisites are a non-issue (even though you will have to take prerequisite courses that force you to take classes in a certain sequence). In summer 2015, only four courses are going to be offered in the ECE department. Let’s say that similar classes are also offered during the summer when you are a student and you take all of them (which you’re probably not going to want to do–that’s an extremely rough schedule). That’s still about 20-21 units you would have to take a quarter. And that was assuming EVERY star aligned to let you do that (keep in mind most classes are 4 units so it would really be some 20 unit quarters and perhaps one 24 unit quarter, which is over the maximum number of units allowed), and some of those assumptions are, quite frankly, not going to happen. Also, keep in mind that you will be lower in priority when it comes to scheduling for classes, so it may be difficult for you to get upper division classes in your first and second years because you’re competing with third and fourth years with more units than you.
Map it out yourself and see if you can make it work. You can always try, but it’s unlikely. And probably not a very good idea.
As a point of reference, I came into UCSD with 68 units of credit. I could have graduated in three years easy (but chose not to and was very glad that I did). Two years would have been really pushing it, and I wasn’t an engineering major. I would have had no opportunity to get research experience, teaching experience, internships, and letters of rec. I also wouldn’t have been able to double major or take classes out of interest. I don’t recommend rushing it that much unless you have a really good reason. Why do you want to graduate in 2 years?
^Yeah, you’re probably right. 3 years would be best. Does anyone know about the major electrical engineering and society. A significant portion of it is humanities oriented which would make it easier to overlap classes with my GE requirements.
I used this http://ece.ucsd.edu/sites/ece.ucsd.edu/files/ece/assets/docs_undergrad/Freshman%20Plans14_15.pdf when I was calculating the minimum number of classes you needed to take. The Electrical Engineering and Society major only requires 2 social science/humanities courses, unless you’re talking about a different major?