<p>So I'm a sophomore at Emory and I'm paying for college myself, so the prospect of not paying that fourth year worth of tuition/room/board/books is pretty appealing. I can feasibly have my major and minor finished by the end of my junior year and am seriously considering graduating a year early. I'm just worried that if I apply to grad school or for various jobs they'll look down upon it or see it as rushing through college, especially since I've heard that a lot of schools look for signs of really mature, well-rounded people in their applicants. I'm also worried that I'll regret the decision later because I'll be missing out on my senior year of college. Any insight? It would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!</p>
<p>If you can swing it then do it. If anything, someone who finishes early would be more attractive for a graduate program, because it typically means that you have your act together, and are likely quite bright to get through all your classes so fast…</p>
<p>It doesn’t hurt that you’ll be saving yourself a substantial amount of money by doing so. I see no negative to finishing early.</p>
<p>You might be a weaker candidate for research-oriented graduate programs because past research experience is often a big factor in admissions. However, if you find that a lack of experience is holding you back, it’s easy enough to continue working with professors after you graduate without paying tuition.</p>
<p>try not to. Money may be an issue that you may not be able to surmount.
Try to take a senior year with graduate courses. </p>
<p>DS skip a primary grade. Got thru university in 4, with double engineering degrees -small overlap (AP’s don’t count much at a tech school), finished grad school in 15 months. We were very glad that he was able to get 18 months of internships, after his grad school- not that he learned anything, He gained maturity, a little more polish and allowed his cohort to catchup. </p>
<p>BTW, why do you want to do grad school?</p>
<p>I could have graduated a semester early and wish now that I had done it. I don’t think it would have affected my experience (though I wouldn’t have given the commencement speech if I had left early). I think a middle ground might be possible. If you can take a couple graduate courses in the first semester of year four, that moves you along your path and addresses some of the concerns you have. Then you can save thousands (likely over $10k) by graduating a semester early. I paid my own way through school and graduated about 15 years ago. I’ll be paying loans back until my 4 year old son turns 15. Debt will have a limiting effect on your choices in the future and I recommend trying to minimize it now.</p>
<p>Personally, I would not pay tuition to take a couple of graduate classes that don’t count towards a degree. A semester at Emory is like… $20,000 for tuition alone? That’s insane! </p>
<p>At one of my former universities, there were several auditors in each of the first-year graduate classes in my field. Some of them were graduate students from other departments, some were members of the local community who wanted to prepare for a graduate education themselves. The professors didn’t mind the auditors, and were in fact happy to give them letters of recommendations for their grad school applications.</p>
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What do you actually want to go to graduate school for? The PhD programs I am familiar with don’t care about well-roundedness - they want students who are willing to make a commitment to a very narrow specialty.</p>
<p>The only reason that it would matter would be research experience - naturally by graduating sooner, you would have 1 less year to gain that research experience. But in many fields you can get paid research after you graduate with a BA, and this would only matter for PhD programs anyway.</p>
<p>The jobs won’t care - they just want to see that you have a BA. If you get the kinds of experiences they look for (internships, leadership) then you’re golden. And professional master’s programs also will not care.</p>
<p>You won’t be “missing out” on your senior year - your senior year will simply come a year early. It’s not like high school, trust me, especially at a place as large as Emory. There’s no prom, homecoming queen (not in the high school sense anyway), senior prank, etc. College is getting what you came for and getting out. If you can save $60K by graduating a year early…do it!</p>
<p>I would second what someone else already said: do not waste your time taking graduate courses your 4th year. It is highly likely that those graduate courses will not transfer to another school anyways. Don’t waste more time and money.</p>