<p>Can anyone shed some light on this? This is a big concern for me.</p>
<p>I just want to know if it's very possible to graduate in 4 or less years. . .</p>
<p>I believe that I read in some recent Cal thing that "90% of graduates graduate in 6 or less years." This was a bit weird. So I'd like to find out really how possible it is to get out in 4 years. Is being focused enough to do it?</p>
<p>Thank you guys =)</p>
<p>I’m going to graduate in 4 years with some flexibility to double major or minor. I think its very doable. Just don’t waste time. Get major pre-reqs out of the way so you can move onto upper divs for your major. You can intersperse those with the other requirements you need to graduate (AC, any other breadths you need to fill, and any other elective you want to take).</p>
<p>Mcshelvy,
It is definitely possible, and indeed likely, that you will graduate on time. I’m a 4th year now who is graduating this May. I have other friends who graduated in 3 or even 2.5 years. The friends I do know who are staying late are doing so to complete a double major, or because they never want to leave college, haha.</p>
<p>As far as the “6 years” statistic, the problem with it is that if a student takes any summer courses, they are not considered to have graduated in 4 years. Seems like a weird way to measure it to me, but there you go. </p>
<p>Moral of the story: do not worry about this. You should have no problem graduating in 4 years at Berkeley.</p>
<p>i probably coulda graduated in 3 years had i taken classes in the summer and ****.</p>
<p>i’m a double major in 2 very different things and can graduate a semester early. and i wasted a lot of time freshman year. i don’t know anyone who has actually taken longer than 4 years to graduate.</p>
<p>When I went to Cal Day, the dean(?) of CNR said that the average was 4.25 years to graduate. I’m not sure if it only applies to CNR or the whole school, but it should be pretty close. A LOT of people were concerned with this issue and kept on asking this question but in different words during the Q & A section. The people that don’t graduate in 4 years are the ones that probably either partied a little too hard during freshman year (one of the current students in the panel confessed doing this) or the things that katalina mentioned above.</p>
<p>Thank you guys for your responses!!! =) Really appreciated.</p>
<p>This is a weird question, but did you guys have any time to take any I guess “fun” classes? I mean classes that are really nonessential or something. . .</p>
<p>^^ decal.org</p>
<p>I have a lot of friends who took a semester or two longer to graduate. But note that if you enter as a freshman, you should be eligible for financial aid for 5 years, not including summers. And you can take summer classes if you want to spread out a bit.</p>
<p>And I know several people who graduated in 2.5 or 3 years. I personally think there’s a lot of freedom, especially compared to small private schools that refuse to give you more than eight semesters to finish up and don’t offer summer classes. Give Berkeley some slack.</p>
<p>I’ve heard that it is difficult to get your first choice classes because space fills up quickly. Even if I plan my courses out thoroughly, will the fact that space fills up quickly possibly have an effect on whether or not I will be able to graduate in four years?</p>
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<p>Try to take key prerequisite courses for your major as early as you can to maximize course selection flexibility, and have alternate course plans. For example, if you want X in the fall and Y in the spring (and neither has prerequisites that you have not fulfilled), but you find that X is too full in the fall but Y is not, take Y in the fall and try for X in the spring.</p>
<p>Not being able to graduate in four years is not really a problem for Cal or the other UCs which have not had to endure serious budget cuts. It is essentially a CSU problem where budget cuts have been far more severe than at the UCs making it extremely difficult for science and engineering majors to get classes in Calculus, Physics and Chemistry resulting in CSU students in science and engineering not being able to even start their upper division coursework until they have been on campus for four or five years.</p>