Anonymous wrote:Obviously people keep learning and doing fun things after college graduation. But in the FT work world, you only get two weeks of PTO a year. You don't have summers and all those long school breaks once you start a full time job. And being a student isn't a full time job in the sense that you don't spend 40 hours/week sitting in classes or labs. Most of it is spent on your own, and you can often select the times and days when you are in class. It really is a different phase of life that will never come again. There's no need to rush through your youth unless you're financially strapped. And most people have more to learn after their junior year of college. Practicing writing some more papers, preferably a honors thesis if you're all done with requirements for your major, or doing a double major are ways to improve your skills and make yourself more attractive to grad schools and employers.

As someone who hires college grads, I would look upon a degree earned in three years as inferior to one earned in four. I'd also wonder if you're socially inept or uncomfortable with your peers because why else would you skip your fun senior year?

You wouldn’t know when a degree was started, only the graduation date.

Anonymous wrote:Obviously people keep learning and doing fun things after college graduation. But in the FT work world, you only get two weeks of PTO a year. You don't have summers and all those long school breaks once you start a full time job. And being a student isn't a full time job in the sense that you don't spend 40 hours/week sitting in classes or labs. Most of it is spent on your own, and you can often select the times and days when you are in class. It really is a different phase of life that will never come again. There's no need to rush through your youth unless you're financially strapped. And most people have more to learn after their junior year of college. Practicing writing some more papers, preferably a honors thesis if you're all done with requirements for your major, or doing a double major are ways to improve your skills and make yourself more attractive to grad schools and employers.

As someone who hires college grads, I would look upon a degree earned in three years as inferior to one earned in four. I'd also wonder if you're socially inept or uncomfortable with your peers because why else would you skip your fun senior year?

Are you serious? Have you ever heard of the concept of having student loans? Or that the difference between graduating in 3 years vs 4 is $35,000 COA?

Anonymous wrote:Obviously people keep learning and doing fun things after college graduation. But in the FT work world, you only get two weeks of PTO a year. You don't have summers and all those long school breaks once you start a full time job. And being a student isn't a full time job in the sense that you don't spend 40 hours/week sitting in classes or labs. Most of it is spent on your own, and you can often select the times and days when you are in class. It really is a different phase of life that will never come again. There's no need to rush through your youth unless you're financially strapped. And most people have more to learn after their junior year of college. Practicing writing some more papers, preferably a honors thesis if you're all done with requirements for your major, or doing a double major are ways to improve your skills and make yourself more attractive to grad schools and employers.

As someone who hires college grads, I would look upon a degree earned in three years as inferior to one earned in four. I'd also wonder if you're socially inept or uncomfortable with your peers because why else would you skip your fun senior year?

Oh, and lots of kids do long commutes to their classes. Not everyone can afford to live close to campus. They do not have this fun, idyllic experience you think is so prevalent.

Anonymous wrote:Obviously people keep learning and doing fun things after college graduation. But in the FT work world, you only get two weeks of PTO a year. You don't have summers and all those long school breaks once you start a full time job. And being a student isn't a full time job in the sense that you don't spend 40 hours/week sitting in classes or labs. Most of it is spent on your own, and you can often select the times and days when you are in class. It really is a different phase of life that will never come again. There's no need to rush through your youth unless you're financially strapped. And most people have more to learn after their junior year of college. Practicing writing some more papers, preferably a honors thesis if you're all done with requirements for your major, or doing a double major are ways to improve your skills and make yourself more attractive to grad schools and employers.

As someone who hires college grads, I would look upon a degree earned in three years as inferior to one earned in four. I'd also wonder if you're socially inept or uncomfortable with your peers because why else would you skip your fun senior year?

Um, lots of kids (most?) ARE financially strapped & work full time during the summers, and often, nearly full time during the school year.

Obviously people keep learning and doing fun things after college graduation. But in the FT work world, you only get two weeks of PTO a year. You don't have summers and all those long school breaks once you start a full time job. And being a student isn't a full time job in the sense that you don't spend 40 hours/week sitting in classes or labs. Most of it is spent on your own, and you can often select the times and days when you are in class. It really is a different phase of life that will never come again. There's no need to rush through your youth unless you're financially strapped. And most people have more to learn after their junior year of college. Practicing writing some more papers, preferably a honors thesis if you're all done with requirements for your major, or doing a double major are ways to improve your skills and make yourself more attractive to grad schools and employers.

As someone who hires college grads, I would look upon a degree earned in three years as inferior to one earned in four. I'd also wonder if you're socially inept or uncomfortable with your peers because why else would you skip your fun senior year?

I was a working class first-gen student at HSYP. My college years were heaven for me. I squeezed every possible benefit from that HSYP experience. No way would I have left early and short-changed myself. When it was time to leave it was really bittersweet. We had developed such strong friendships and had shared so many challenging and joyful times together during those short four years. I can't imagine any of us wanting it to end a minute sooner than necessary.

At schools like HSYP they used APs for placement purposes back in the day. If you got a 5 on AP Calculus you could enroll in the harder Calc for engineers math class. Otherwise, you had to take a math test during orientation week, and everyone who didn't score high enough went into the regular calc class. But nobody skipped taking the first calculus class in the math series. There's no way that those high school AP or community college Dual Enrollment classes are at all equivalent to taking something like chemistry with HSYP students who are being graded on a curve.

If HSYP is going to give you a diploma with their name on it, they want to be sure your course work was completed under their standards and conditions. I agree with that approach.

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Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the impact the COVID had on this cohort in terms of on-campus experience and how virtual classes and lack of social community bonding experiences could have affected a person's emotional bond to the school and the community.

Add to this lack of (or dampening of) ties to the other more traditional reasons mentioned, enough credits to leave early (AP, summer, overloaded at home schedule), save $, general grind of school....

Plus the idea that this group is used to doing something different than had been done before...COVID mixed it up...there's no longer as strong of a message of "it's USUALLY done this way".

Yawn.

Yes, yawn that current college students didn’t have the college experience that we all hope to have

"we" as in you. Time to move on.

Correct, that’s why so many kids are graduating early. Time to get out & move on.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the impact the COVID had on this cohort in terms of on-campus experience and how virtual classes and lack of social community bonding experiences could have affected a person's emotional bond to the school and the community.

Add to this lack of (or dampening of) ties to the other more traditional reasons mentioned, enough credits to leave early (AP, summer, overloaded at home schedule), save $, general grind of school....

Plus the idea that this group is used to doing something different than had been done before...COVID mixed it up...there's no longer as strong of a message of "it's USUALLY done this way".

Yawn.

Yes, yawn that current college students didn’t have the college experience that we all hope to have

"we" as in you. Time to move on.

DD could have graduated semester early this December but instead decided to take ART studio and music electives. Will have other enriching/fun electives in Spring senior year and will look for full time work with technical degree before graduation. It was ultimately her decision but I did offer up the opinion that you are only 21 with little responsibilities once. She is at state school with decent but not full merit scholarship. Her 529 is somewhat over funded due to the decision to go public but who knows about grad school cost. There is $100k left for that (would have been $120k) if she graduated early. If she never uses, she can have as Roth. IMO life is not all about making money as quickly as you can. It is fun to be poor and 21 and hanging out with friends. Nothing is wrong with enjoying the present. The future will come anyway…..

Graduating early may mean graduate with only one major vs minors and double majors, leadership experience, more research experience etc. My child chose to graduate a semester early anyway.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the impact the COVID had on this cohort in terms of on-campus experience and how virtual classes and lack of social community bonding experiences could have affected a person's emotional bond to the school and the community.

Add to this lack of (or dampening of) ties to the other more traditional reasons mentioned, enough credits to leave early (AP, summer, overloaded at home schedule), save $, general grind of school....

Plus the idea that this group is used to doing something different than had been done before...COVID mixed it up...there's no longer as strong of a message of "it's USUALLY done this way".

Yawn.

Yes, yawn that current college students didn’t have the college experience that we all hope to have

Anonymous wrote:I'm surprised nobody has mentioned the impact the COVID had on this cohort in terms of on-campus experience and how virtual classes and lack of social community bonding experiences could have affected a person's emotional bond to the school and the community.

Add to this lack of (or dampening of) ties to the other more traditional reasons mentioned, enough credits to leave early (AP, summer, overloaded at home schedule), save $, general grind of school....

Plus the idea that this group is used to doing something different than had been done before...COVID mixed it up...there's no longer as strong of a message of "it's USUALLY done this way".

Yawn.

The wealthy kids I know grew up fast. Started visiting older friends & relatives at college while they were in HS.

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Anonymous wrote:All the AP classes taken in MCPS and going to OOS publics where they accept the APs makes it super easy to graduate in 3 years, saving tens of thousands of dollars, which in our case, can then go toward grad school

My UMC MCPS grad also got credits for AP classes in UMD-CP. He could finish in 2.5 years if he wanted. Instead, he chose to double major in CS and Maths in 4 years. Also, since tuition was paid through merit scholarship, he wanted to utilize it for all 4 years, since getting these dual majors was costing him zero dollars. Grad school will certainly happen for him.

I wish my niece had followed this path. She got a lot of financial aid to attend a top public university. She finished in 3 years with a film studies major. I suggested that she consider doing a double major with something kind of practical, just as a fall-back, since her education was mostly "free" to her. She refused to consider the idea. I thought it was a waste of a year of free education at a top public university, but the brain of a 21-year-old is not fully developed.

Are you an expert on her career path? Do you comprehend opportunity cost? The *loss of life is not free. The year of lost wages and experience is not free. You either dive into film all-in or you fail. What precisely do you think your film major niece could pursue in 2 semesters that would be so worthwhile so as to delay her life and career a year? I’m guessing she wasn’t only 2 semesters away from a chemical engineering degree. It would be absolute best-case something incredibly weak that wouldn’t make a bit of difference to recruiters — if she could even handle the coursework.

*loss

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Anonymous wrote:School just isn’t fun anymore. It’s not about exploration or making friends. From one year before they start tracking math in your neighborhood, it’s about executive function and taking all the right classes. And it never ends. You might as well stop spending money and start making money, because you’re not having fun anyway.

+1

There isn’t a lot of room for creative exploration in school any more, either at the college or HS level. It is all about the grade grind. That makes it boring and if you are going to grind you might as well get money for it.

Are the kids happier once they start working?

Not according to Brene Brown.