As shown on Fox Business, a survey was done by Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, saying that 84.3% percent of incoming college freshmen believe that they’ll have their degree in 4 years, but only half of them actually will. Why is that? Oftentimes, students change majors, don’t take full course loads, or take courses that don’t even apply to your major. The problem here is that each for semester you stay in college, the more dept you end up accumulating, so your original 4-year estimate becomes much greater.
Fortunately, many colleges are agreeing to a more streamlined approach to making it easier for students to finish on time. Creating large pool of credit hours and providing easier course access are a couple of examples. This flexibility helps students obtain there degree without having to worry about spending an extra semester or two scraping up the remaining courses that are left.
Now not all colleges offer this at this time, so what are some things you can do in the meantime?
Get familiar with the program requirements. For every degree, the courses that you need to take are usually listed, as well as what order in which to take them and some even provide a semester-by-semester outline for your 4 years, giving you a road map to which courses to take. If you follow this road map, you can avoid taking too many electives and having to wait an extra year to be able to take certain courses again.
Find out how many courses you need to take each semester. Usually, you’ll be taking 12-15 credit hours, or 4-5 courses, each semester in order to finish on time. Now for some, this isn’t entirely feasible, and that’s understandable. Tuition rates are on the rise, making it more and more difficult to carry full course loads. Getting a job helps with this issue, but then that means you have less time to study. Now I’ve been able to work 30 hours a week while taking 13 credit hours (Physics 1 included) at a university and still make it through by the skin of my teeth. I guess it all depends on how hard you’re willing to push to get over the hill.
Stick with your major. This is something that students seem to do quite frequently. Change majors, I mean. Do you not know what you want to do? Honestly, college isn’t the best place to find out what you want to do with your life If this is the case and you really have no clue what it is you want to do, you’re better off getting your A.A. and sitting on that until you find what it is that you enjoy doing.
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