4 ms·

>UW offers three-year degrees. Not just in Canadian universities, I believe it is pretty common and the parent commenter is just not aware. I went to Georgia

>UW offers three-year degrees. Not just in Canadian universities, I believe it is pretty common and the parent commenter is just not aware. I went to Georgia Tech, a public school in Atlanta. While the "planned" curriculum is supposed to fit in 4 years, the median is actually around 4.5-5 years. But there are some people who manage to graduate in 3.5 or 3 years (I know 2 of those personally). In most schools in the US, there is no such thing as "years". You have the classes you need to take to graduate in your program, and it is up to you how to manage that workload. Wanna take 12 credit hours per semester and graduate in 5 years? Sure. Want to take 18-20 hours per semester and graduate in a bit over 3? Absolutely. Of course some classes have prerequisites and time overlaps, so it isn't 100% freeform, but you can always control the pace at which you graduate. At least that was the experience at my public college, as well as that of almost everyone else I talked to.

tmpz22 6y ago
The University of Oregon charges based on credit hours so more or less its an identical price for any degree (sans scholarship). I've always been under the impression this this is the norm. I'm glad your school offered reduced rates for some degree paths but I think it is an outlier.
- filoleg 6y ago
  Unfortunately, they didn't reduce the rates. It was the same tuition price per semester, regardless of credit hours (as long as you still stay full-time, because the price for part-time is half). Which meant that people who graduated in quicker time spent less money. The cost was also the same for all undergrad degrees. But it wasn't much of a concern at GT, because of the statewide Hope/Zell Miller scholarship covering the tuition based on the credit hours (and not on the actual semesters, you just have to have GPA high enough to qualify, which wasn't that high at all). So if you wanted to speedrun it and risk your GPA, you could do that. But if you wanted to take it slower, that scholarship allowed you to do so, because they paid regardless of how many years you took to graduate, as long as you were full time (with some nuances around part-time that aren't worth getting into right now), had high enough GPA, and you werent over the total cap of credit hours needed to graduate from your program.
  - taormina 6y ago
    You can call a 3.0 GPA "low" but it's also Dean's List at GT....
    - filoleg 6y ago
      My bad, I didn't mean "low" as in "bad". I meant "low" in terms of what people would consider "impressive". 3.0 won't get you into any respectable med school, and 3.0 is also pretty much a very bare minimum required to get into a decent grad school program. While keeping 3.0 at GT might be a fairly difficult task, it is more than doable, and it wouldn't be considered by most GT students as some ungodly achievement. For comparison, the average GPA for fraternity members at Georgia Tech for Spring 2020 was 3.7 (which is higher than the average GT student GPA, but not by some crazy amount, and I think is a pretty good proxy for showing that 3.0 is not something that only a small number of students can achieve).[0] 0. https://fraternity.gatech.edu/51879_GATech_Guide.pdf https://fraternity.gatech.edu/51879_GATech_Guide.pdf
bilegeek 6y ago
>Of course some classes have prerequisites and time overlaps One semester is designed with a particular set of prerequisites in mind. Most times, one prerequisite holds back every other class on the career path. So, if you don't take that one class that semester, you can only take the elective courses until you take that class. Which means that when you run out of electives, what was supposed to be one semester becomes two, with the only course you qualify for in the second being the one you missed (this isn't necessarily true for the spring semester, since you could take the missing class during the summer.) This is fine, but it leads to a disparity; taking on more classes than the recommended workload has a pretty linear correlation with decreased time to a degree (though the problem still persists that you don't qualify for your next classes); but taking on less than the recommended often jumps straight to doubling the time needed for a degree, with very little room in-between.
- filoleg 6y ago
  It all heavily depends on how your specific college manages your curriculum and how open the choices are. My personal example: decided to ignore most of the general studies classes I could ignore (aka those that weren't prereqs for any major-related classes, like most social studies) for the first year, did two 14-16 hour semesters for the first year, about 12 hours (each semester) for the second and third year (aka minimum required to be considered full time), took one fall semester off and then did one summer semester instead, and then finished off my last year with two back-to-back 22-24 hour semesters (during which I took a lot of those classes I ignored during my first year). My school let us do it pretty much free-form, and it was amazing. Taking all the important major-related classes early on let me become knowledgeable enough for internships before a lot of peers (since I ended up taking some important major classes a semester or two ahead instead of taking gen ed classes like a lot of others did at the time), and during my last year I got a bit of a break by taking some of those "general ed" classes that most of my peers took early on. I love this system, because it allows people to balance it all as they see fit. Some people would like to get all the gen ed classes out of the way first. Some would want to save them for last. Some would like to take them regularly at a "one general ed class per semester" pace. Some people would like to just do 16 credit hours every semester. Some would like to slow down at times and them ramp up heavily at times (which is what I did). Some would like to graduate early, others would like to take their time. Whichever style works for you. And yeah, we had a general guideline for every major, with every class planned out every semester serving as a "sample workload", but it was just a guideline. Most people followed it to a degree, but not close. Others completely threw it out of the window, because they sorta knew what and how they wanted to do it. I think it is helpful to have for those who don't want to plan out things to their max efficiency and just want to not worry about it. But it isn't something that everyone is forced to abide by, it is more like an advice.

tmpz22 6y ago

The University of Oregon charges based on credit hours so more or less its an identical price for any degree (sans scholarship). I've always been under the impression this this is the norm. I'm glad your school offered reduced rates for some degree paths but I think it is an outlier.

filoleg 6y ago
Unfortunately, they didn't reduce the rates. It was the same tuition price per semester, regardless of credit hours (as long as you still stay full-time, because the price for part-time is half). Which meant that people who graduated in quicker time spent less money. The cost was also the same for all undergrad degrees. But it wasn't much of a concern at GT, because of the statewide Hope/Zell Miller scholarship covering the tuition based on the credit hours (and not on the actual semesters, you just have to have GPA high enough to qualify, which wasn't that high at all). So if you wanted to speedrun it and risk your GPA, you could do that. But if you wanted to take it slower, that scholarship allowed you to do so, because they paid regardless of how many years you took to graduate, as long as you were full time (with some nuances around part-time that aren't worth getting into right now), had high enough GPA, and you werent over the total cap of credit hours needed to graduate from your program.
- taormina 6y ago
  You can call a 3.0 GPA "low" but it's also Dean's List at GT....
  - filoleg 6y ago
    My bad, I didn't mean "low" as in "bad". I meant "low" in terms of what people would consider "impressive". 3.0 won't get you into any respectable med school, and 3.0 is also pretty much a very bare minimum required to get into a decent grad school program. While keeping 3.0 at GT might be a fairly difficult task, it is more than doable, and it wouldn't be considered by most GT students as some ungodly achievement. For comparison, the average GPA for fraternity members at Georgia Tech for Spring 2020 was 3.7 (which is higher than the average GT student GPA, but not by some crazy amount, and I think is a pretty good proxy for showing that 3.0 is not something that only a small number of students can achieve).[0] 0. https://fraternity.gatech.edu/51879_GATech_Guide.pdf https://fraternity.gatech.edu/51879_GATech_Guide.pdf

bilegeek 6y ago

>Of course some classes have prerequisites and time overlaps One semester is designed with a particular set of prerequisites in mind. Most times, one prerequisite holds back every other class on the career path. So, if you don't take that one class that semester, you can only take the elective courses until you take that class. Which means that when you run out of electives, what was supposed to be one semester becomes two, with the only course you qualify for in the second being the one you missed (this isn't necessarily true for the spring semester, since you could take the missing class during the summer.) This is fine, but it leads to a disparity; taking on more classes than the recommended workload has a pretty linear correlation with decreased time to a degree (though the problem still persists that you don't qualify for your next classes); but taking on less than the recommended often jumps straight to doubling the time needed for a degree, with very little room in-between.

filoleg 6y ago
It all heavily depends on how your specific college manages your curriculum and how open the choices are. My personal example: decided to ignore most of the general studies classes I could ignore (aka those that weren't prereqs for any major-related classes, like most social studies) for the first year, did two 14-16 hour semesters for the first year, about 12 hours (each semester) for the second and third year (aka minimum required to be considered full time), took one fall semester off and then did one summer semester instead, and then finished off my last year with two back-to-back 22-24 hour semesters (during which I took a lot of those classes I ignored during my first year). My school let us do it pretty much free-form, and it was amazing. Taking all the important major-related classes early on let me become knowledgeable enough for internships before a lot of peers (since I ended up taking some important major classes a semester or two ahead instead of taking gen ed classes like a lot of others did at the time), and during my last year I got a bit of a break by taking some of those "general ed" classes that most of my peers took early on. I love this system, because it allows people to balance it all as they see fit. Some people would like to get all the gen ed classes out of the way first. Some would want to save them for last. Some would like to take them regularly at a "one general ed class per semester" pace. Some people would like to just do 16 credit hours every semester. Some would like to slow down at times and them ramp up heavily at times (which is what I did). Some would like to graduate early, others would like to take their time. Whichever style works for you. And yeah, we had a general guideline for every major, with every class planned out every semester serving as a "sample workload", but it was just a guideline. Most people followed it to a degree, but not close. Others completely threw it out of the window, because they sorta knew what and how they wanted to do it. I think it is helpful to have for those who don't want to plan out things to their max efficiency and just want to not worry about it. But it isn't something that everyone is forced to abide by, it is more like an advice.