<p>Hello everyone. I will be beginning college this Fall as a computer science major. I'll have ~30 hours of AP credit. I don't plan on going to graduate school, and money is not an issue in paying for college.</p>
<p>I would like to have your thoughts on the pros/cons of graduating in 3 years, and the pros/cons of graduating in 4 years. Thank you.</p>
<p>Pros of 3 years: Fewer years in school, don’t have to pay for a fourth year, can start trying to find a job and make money.</p>
<p>Pros of 4 years: More time to take all the classes you want (possibly complete a minor), more flexibility with scheduling, can spread out classes more for an easier workload.</p>
<p>With technical majors it’s not always a question of how many credits you have, though. CS usually has a lot of requirements, and sometimes chains of prereqs (need to take math before more math before physics before more physics…) that take a long time to finish.</p>
<p>Of course, you’ve still got time to decide. You could always see where you’re at after 2 years, and if you still have a lot of class you want (or need) to take, use all four years. If you feel like you’re ready to be done with school then, plan your schedule so you can graduate a year (or semester) early.</p>
<p>Do you know that the college you’ll be attending will let you bring in all 30 credits from AP? Many colleges cap AP credits.</p>
<p>Many schools limit AP credits awarded and many schools will charge an “early graduation fee” the equivalent of a semester on campus as when they accepted you, they anticipated four years worth of tuition and fees.</p>
<p>Your AP credits should give you a great deal of flexibility to take lots of classes you like. My recommendation would be to take classes as if you would like to graduate in three ( finish your major requirements), but spend the last year getting a minor or specialty. If you decide you have had enough, you can apply to graduate. However, if things are going well and you are enjoying yourself, take the extra year.</p>
<p>My daughter could have graduated in three years pretty easily, but wanted to spend time with someone she met along the way.;)</p>
<p>Our son came in with a year of dual-enrollment credits but still took four years to graduate. He took several graduate courses and worked part-time jobs and had internships. It would have been hard for him to do it in four years because of the way the senior year projects went. They are a two-course sequence, have prereqs and sequences are usually offered every other year. So picking the particular projects that you wanted to do was somewhat dependent on when they were offered.</p>
<p>I’d suggest making a list of graduation requirements and then a spreadsheet with semesters going down the side and course numbers across the top. You could leave two rows with your AP courses. Then fill in your AP courses while checking off the graduation requirements list. Put those in one color.</p>
<p>Then go through the remaining graduation requirements and try to fill in the matrix so that it fits in three years. If you have access to your university’s schedule for a prior year, try to line up the requirements with courses that were actually available for the year in the same semester.</p>
<p>Also note prerequisites as you’re filling in the matrix. You could also add rows for summer courses if you want to use them to help.</p>
<p>This should give you a better idea as to how you could do it in three years.</p>
<p>I did this for our son on a regular basis. The advising at his school was pretty weak so I kept on top of requirements, scheduling, etc. I gave him a list of his best options on courses and he picked the courses to take in any semester. There were a lot of kids that didn’t graduate in four because they couldn’t get something that they needed or didn’t pass something that was a prereq to something else that they needed or they forgot about a gen ed that met some requirement.</p>
<p>My brother was in ECE and graduated in three years because of AP credits. He’s in grad school now.
His main advice for staying in four years is that you have one extra summer + school year to have an internship/researchship, which can be very valuable for grad school. Since that’s not you plan, there are some clear benefits to four years, but three seems fine if you just want to get out.</p>
<p>I do second failure622’s comment about prereq chains. It really depends on what these AP credits are in and whether you can get through certain course sequences in six semesters. If you decide on 3, it may mean taking one or two courses over a summer, not for credits, but to make the timing work out.</p>