Graduating undergrad school in two years a good or bad idea?

College Search & Selection
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<p>My dad is a professor at Pfeiffer University, where I have thus been taking taking college courses for free. I am still a senior in high school. By the time I finish high school, it is very likely I will have 3-4 semesters worth of college credit in subject areas that will transfer almost everywhere (mostly general ed courses). I can quite easily graduate college two years after I graduate high school. Here's my question: should I? I am planning to pursue graduate study afterward; someone told me that graduating in two years would be a bad idea for graduate study because research opportunities would be lost. I do not know much about the whole undergraduate research scenario (I thought research was only a component of grad school) so if someone could please explain, it would be greatly appreciated.</p>

<p>So what do you think? Graduate in two years, or stay for three to four years? And why?</p>

2

<p>Research can be done as an undergraduate, and is helpful when applying to graduate school.</p>

<p>Also, it may be a tight schedule to do it in four semesters anyway, assuming you go to UNC-CH. Example (based on [Degree</a> Requirements for the Bachelor of Science in Computer Science ? Department of Computer Science](<a href=“http://www.cs.unc.edu/cms/academics/undergraduate-programs/degree-requirements-BS]Degree”>http://www.cs.unc.edu/cms/academics/undergraduate-programs/degree-requirements-BS) and <a href=“http://www.unc.edu/ugradbulletin/depts/compsci.html[/url]”>http://www.unc.edu/ugradbulletin/depts/compsci.html&lt;/a&gt; ):</p>

<p>Semester 1:
COMP 401
MATH 381
2 other courses</p>

<p>Semester 2:
COMP 410
COMP 411
2 other courses</p>

<p>Semesters 3 and 4:
COMP 550
6 other COMP courses
1 other course</p>

<p>Now, unless your course work at Pfeiffer is transferable to cover much of your math, breadth, and science (if you are doing the BS degree), you might have to overload to fit it all in 4 semesters.</p>

<p>In the above schedule, you may have a hard time getting research opportunities before your third or fourth semester, since you will not have completed the introductory COMP courses until then.</p>

<p>Taking 5 or 6 semesters (or more, if your Pfeiffer course work is mostly not transferable or much of it does not fulfill any degree requirements) would give you more schedule space to take additional in-major courses to get more breadth and depth in computer science, as well as giving you the opportunity to take additional out of major courses of interest.</p>