I’m curious how old OP will be when they begin college.
OP, “life isn’t a sprint. It’s a marathon.” is a true statement.
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Will the college even allow you to take 20 credits your first semester? Both my of my kids were capped at 18.
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Oh, my school has a foreign language req for gen eds, I need at least a 102
What’s the good reason for rushing through undergrad in three years? Frankly, with 20 credits per semester, you have to consider whether your grades will be good enough for a masters degree application.
Why didn’t you apply for undergrad engineering programs? Please explain your thinking about the plan you have.
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Wait…I missed this!
What is your rush here?
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Our cap is 21.
I will turn 14 in the fall of my freshman year. I’ve had this planned out for the past three years; I know for a fact that I want to go to college early, and most of the successful students going to college early through this program have done the early master’s program.
I didn’t apply to undergrad engineering programs because this school with the early bachelor’s program doesn’t have engineering. I applied to schools with engineering as well, but I was rejected from their early entrance programs.
Note: I’m already taking I think it was either 12 or 13 credits over the summer, I genuinely can’t fit more in over the summer because I’m also traveling abroad.
I turned 17 the week before I headed off to university, and graduated university at age 20 (which decades later made me the young kid at our 50th reunion). There are issues with attending university this young which go beyond academics. I am thinking and hoping that you might at least be planning on attending a university where there will be some other very young students in the same situation.
Also, it is possible that you might be underestimating the difficulty of at least some university classes. There are some university classes that you probably are not yet ready for. I took a few of them. However, the hardest university classes that I took were math classes that I took as a graduate student when I was ready to take them. You really will be a stronger student in 5 or 10 years, and there will be universities with tough classes that you are likely to enjoy at that point.
Anyone who would seriously consider starting university at age 14 is either very, very smart, or mistaken, or maybe a bit of both. It is not easy to be that unusual. I understand that. A normal high school might not be a good fit for some students.
Can you afford to take four years rather than three to complete university? Is there any cost reason to try to do this so quickly?
Life is a marathon. We each need to take it at our own pace. For some of us, figuring out what that pace should be can be a challenge.
And at least a few of the smartest people who I have ever met still needed to take some time off from time to time. This may vary from one person to the next.
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I’m attending a special program in which I will be living and attending school with other very young students on a regular campus. I understand what will be happening if I begin university early–I have discussed it extensively with my parents and current students. Nobody I’ve talked to has seemed regretful of beginning college early in any way. Many alums from this program go on to top 20 grad schools. I visited the school last month and lived as a student for 2 days, taking classes and living with other young students. I found classes very interesting, and didn’t see a problem keeping up with traditional students or the professor.
I’m mainly looking for advice on how to structure my classes to make it a bit easier on myself, and if I should take more of them over the summer to not have too high a workload. I know from current students that Eng 102, Info lit, and Intro to college will be easy courses, so my workload would likely be similar to if I took around 18 credits. I also wanted to learn more about the experiences of those who’ve taken this number of courses in freshman year, and their perspectives and advice.
I could see how this could be a very good thing for some academically very strong young students. This sounds like a situation where you will be studying alongside other students who are “like you” in ways that matter, such as being very smart, hardworking, and very interested in academics, and being a similar age.
This may be unusual enough that it is tough for some of us to give useful advice, other than for you to try to figure out what pace is right for you.
One thing to keep in mind is whatever the date is by which you can drop a course without it showing up on your transcript or having any other negative consequence. I did multiple times in university, both as an undergraduate student and again as a graduate student, start the semester or the quarter off taking one extra course. Then I dropped one after figuring out which courses made more sense for me, and also after getting some sense of the workload. Given how far ahead you are compared to an average student, if all of this ends up taking one extra year that doesn’t seem like a problem (assuming that the finances work out okay).
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Okay, thanks! I’m mainly looking for advice on the 20 credit thing, not necessarily about my unique situation.
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Speak to your advisor at the school and heed the advice.
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Okay, thank you!
Typically, freshmen will take 14-15 credits, including the “easy” “adjust to college” seminar.
I would advise saving Eng102 for the Spring. Even if it’s an easy course, it’s still a course, so still time you have to devote to it. It’d still be tough, with 15 credits of hard courses and 2 easy credits (that nevertheless will take a bit of time and discipline.)
I would also consider taking much more than 102 in a foreign language - if you’re truly interested in History, you’ll need to know a language well (like, 400-level well).
Since your college doesn’t offer Engineering, are you going to major in Physics?
Double majoring makes sense for a bright, curious mind. Double majoring in 3 years doesn’t. In addition, Engineering is sequential - you simply can’t take some classes concurrently, so even students with a full year of AP credits need 4 years (and it’s common for students, even with some AP credit, to need 5* years just for the BS in Engineering.) As a result, you can’t rush it.
Is there a way you can complete your double degree in 4 years?
Btw, at 14 you’d need 9 hours of sleep for your brain to function well and not harm you down the road (like, crack at age 20). If you sleep little, 8H might work but nothing less.
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You’ve decided to go to this school so follow the rest of the program. I would be shocked if they recommended 20 credits per semester or graduating with a double major in 3 years, but if they do, will it be a quality education?
You don’t go to law school for a ‘patent law degree.’ All law students take the same basic classes and maybe have room to concentrate on one area like criminal law, divorce, tax, but I don’t know of any school that has a specialty in patent law. One takes the patent bar after the regular state bar.
I started college at 17 and it was tough to go from living at home where grocery shopping and meal prep, laundry, scheduling, and my uncontrolled interest in being in charge of everything. At 14, even living in a dorm with other teens, would have been hard. Taking 20 credits? Impossible. Starting law school at 19 or 20 with NO other teens? Very very hard. Law school is a social place. You need others to work with you on lessons, to help you in the library, to relax with. Relaxing often means in a bar, and even if you only want a Coke, you can’t go into the bar. I was again one of the youngest at 23 and it was still difficult. Most of my classmates had years of work experience and I only had 2 years of full time work (may years of part time, summer, and school term work).
There was a student who entered CU engineering when he was 14 or 15. He lived at home. I think he only took 9 or 12 credits. He was a genius, and he burned out after a year. He just couldn’t keep up on the projects, the late nights working on projects in the lab, figuring out meals while on campus. The basic classes like math were okay (although taking a 2 hour final was a lot harder than he anticipated), taking a 3 hour lab was hard, not being able to discuss things with classmates in the evening because his mom picked him up at 5. He slowed down, stayed in school but part time and about the same number of hours as a 15-16 year old would spend on academics. He picked up activities his same aged peers would do - soccer, family vacations, movies with friends. At 16 and a junior? in college, the courses changed a lot, with more lab time, more projects, internships, etc. There were government job he couldn’t take because he wasn’t 18 (and a few scholarshis).
My daughter was also young for college (17). She also had some difficulties. She couldn’t sign for her own medical care, she had a child’s passport. She couldn’t go to bars. She’d only be able to go to R-rated movies for 6 months (and yes, that was enforced when she was in high school).
If this whole school is teens, they you should do what they do. If this program is just a small part of a bigger college, you are going to be competing against adults for grades, jobs, time with professors, washers and dryers during prime times. Real life is tough.
You will not be able to “clerk” as an undergraduate college student. Clerks at the Federal level are people with law degrees, who have already passed the bar, and increasingly, have practiced at a big firm for a year or two.
Clerks in state or municipal courts are two tiered- there are those who meet the description above, and those who are career public employees (civil servants) who either have a JD or have experience working as a paralegal.
So whoever told you that you will “get a few law internships like clerking” does not understand the legal profession.
Virtually every lawyer in America takes the same standardized curriculum. So you won’t be going to law school for “patent law”, you’ll be going to law school and studying Criminal Procedure, Civil Procedure, etc. just like everyone else.
I’m not sure what’s your rush- but mushing all of these separate stages together and assuming that someone is going to hire- what- a 17 year old law clerk? just shows that you might want to SLOW DOWN. You may or may not decide to practice patent law. You may or may not decide to get a master’s degree before law school. But you need to focus- right now- on giving yourself a solid base freshman year so you can be successful in whatever you decide to do.
Ask your advisor about your schedule- including your summer plans- and then follow that advice.
And nobody needs to double major to go to law school. Nobody. You need great grades and a strong LSAT score. Period.
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The best way to do this is to spread your undergrad studies out an additional year.
Are you saying that everyone in this program does a bachelors in three years?
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Who is 15, 16 or 17 years old…
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