My daughter recently started college with 60 AP credits. However, looking at the requirements of her major and honors program and when classes are offered, it looks like it will be a struggle for her to complete her bachelor’s degree in four years.
For starters, some courses are only offered one semester a year, and the timing often conflicts with other required courses, so she must choose one required course and wait a year to take the conflicting course (which might conflict with something else when the time comes).
Also, some required courses have extensive prerequisites that do not count toward the major. For example, one course alone has five prerequisites that will not count toward the major or core requirements. Her major requires 21 courses on top of an extensive core (most of which she has fulfilled with AP), but that is deceiving because it is much more with prerequisites.
The honors requirements add an additional 6 to 13 courses that she must complete to be able to graduate with Latin honors (which she needs because she plans to attend graduate school in a funded program). For some majors, their department offers a lot of honors courses within the major that can kill two birds with one stone. For students who do not have AP credit, they can also take honors courses for basic core classes. But for my daughter’s major, and with her AP credits, there are no honors courses to take that contribute to her major. She is required to take a minimum of 6 honors courses, and either another 7 honors courses or 7 “experiences” such as conducting research, interning, volunteering, etc. Realistically she’ll probably wind up somewhere in the middle with about 9 honors courses and 4 experiences.
She had thought that with 60 AP credits she would be able to easily take on a minor or two and study abroad at least a semester, but it is looking like it will be a struggle just to complete the major and the honors requirements in four years. I am starting to understand why so many students do not graduate on time. I think it would be impossible if she didn’t have the AP credits. I’ve actually been exploring other possible majors for her with fewer course requirements, but she is limited in her choices because some scholarships she has are tied to her major and department.
Major? School? AP exams and scores? Why is Latin honors (as opposed to good academic performance in major and undergraduate research) needed to get into a funded graduate program?
Without these details, one can only speculate on the possiblities.
One possibility would be a highly sequenced major (e.g. some engineering majors) where the student does not have AP credit for the starting course in the sequence (e.g. calculus 1 in the engineering example). Another possibility is a high volume of major and general education requirements for which AP credit is not accepted for (21 courses for a major is high volume if the usual number of courses over 8 semesters is about 32 – most liberal arts majors are probably in the 12 to 15 course range if the usual number of courses over 8 semester is 32, though engineering majors may require 21 or more in this case). Another possibility is that AP credit allows getting ahead by a semester, but the school or department is small, so that the important sequence courses are only offered once per year instead of every semester, so that the student who is a semester ahead will encounter a semester where s/he will have to wait for the next course in the sequence to be available.
Also, AP credit generally covers frosh-level courses; high volumes of AP credit may encounter diminishing returns as the usefulness of such as subject credit diminishes.
She should work with an academic adviser. It’s possible that some prerequisites could be waived based on other courses taken, or that the adviser knows of a way around the schedule conflict. Sometimes courses have a time assigned but the class doesn’t really meet at that time since the course involves going to museums or watching movies. If the school offers this major, it must have other students doing it too.
I don’t really get the concern with adding minors. I have never ever ever been asked what I minored in, and that’s good because I didn’t have a minor (my school didn’t offer them). My daughter is currently majoring in art history and it will be easy for her to add minors in religion and history if she wants to, but I don’t think it will matter.
Not sure where you got this information, but just not true. (hint: there are a lot of funded grad students who attended a college where honors does not require separate honors courses…and, as is noted above, research, particularly published, can be critical.)
The title of your thread really should be, not enough time in 4 years to take all the courses that my D would like to take. Clearly, she can graduate in 4 years.
I promise you do not need Latin honors to get into a funded PhD program. Absolutely promise.
I did not have Latin honors, nor any other school honors- I turned down the honors college at my U because it seemed more time consuming than it was worth, and my PhD admission rate with funding was 100% (this is said slightly in jest as I only applied to two programs.)
Are you confusing “latin honors” with “an honors program”? Latin honors is typically Cum Laude, Magna Cum Laude, Summa Cum Laude, and depends on one’s grade point average. An honors program is generally a specific “school” within the university which requires completion of more intense versions of courses and possibly some type of thesis. Graduating from an Honors Program does not guarantee graduating with Latin Honors, and vice versa.
Those AP credits are just basic, average college ones even though they are elite for HS. She intends to do elite, not just basic, from what you describe, college work. Honors in Latin is never a grad school requirement. For prerequisites- some find ways of taking courses without those courses. There are ways of doing this- the reason for the required courses is to give the needed background to succeed in a course (ie they can presume students already know the material needed to handle the current class). Plus- courses can be taken out of order- my son did that when he wanted to add a second major instead of grad school a few years ago. Even with computerized scheduling things can be worked around.
She needs to discuss her plans with her advisor. She needs to research her potential schedules so she can present ways of getting things done. “Rules” are meant to be broken as far as prerequisites and course order are concerned.
Not all majors lend themselves to taking a semester for study abroad. There is so much available at a good school one cannot take advantage of a fraction of what one wants to, especially in four years.
Her major accepted 45 of the 60 AP credits toward core requirements. The major is very small with few students, so that is why classes are only offered infrequently. The benefit is small classes, but there’s clearly a detriment to enrolling in an unpopular major.
I think I will take advice from others above and tell my daughter that she should just focus on the major and not concern herself with minors and taking every class she is interested in. If she likes another subject so much, I’ll recommend she switch her major instead. I’ll also encourage her to choose a summer study abroad program over one during the year.
I wasn’t sure if anyone else had encountered prerequisites for required courses that are not part of the required foundation/core, and also honors requirements that are more difficult to fulfill for some majors than others, and that penalize people with AP credits. These things are a bit of a surprise to us… At her university, Latin Honors (magna cum laude etc.) can only go to people in the honors program and is not just dependent on GPA.
@wis75 and @twoinanddone Thanks for pointing out that prerequisites can sometimes be waived and “rules” broken. I hadn’t thought of that.
Her university is very good about requiring meetings with advisers – she met with three advisers prior to first semester, and is about to meet with a couple more before registering for spring. I will have her schedule an appointment to go over long-term plans as well and ask about options down the road for dealing with all the requirements.
The university has a four-year graduation guarantee, but only for students who think to click a button and enroll in it before the first day of classes first semester of freshman year. For those students, the university promises to waive and adjust requirements and jump through all kinds of hoops to ensure graduation in four years, or else provide free classes beyond the four years. Unfortunately my daughter did not do this, so the university does not promise anything. I’m sure there are still people in positions to make decisions to waive prerequisites and otherwise help out.
Wait. I still haven’t gotten past the 60 AP credits. Assuming 3 credits per course, that adds up to 20 AP classes taken in HS. Which averages out to 5 AP classes per year of HS. This makes no sense. What am I not understanding here?
Well, I think many colleges realize that AP courses aren’t really college equivalent and may be giving “credit” for them, but necessarily useful credit. My own daughter got, for instance, “credit” for composition, but her college requires its own writing sequence with a different department designation. So, she has “credit,” but it’s not useful.
@brantly It was 15 AP classes – one freshmen year, three sophomore year, six junior year and five senior year. Her university gave more than 3 credits for some courses.
@Madison85 It’s actually a large university, but a very small major in a small department, and what’s more, the major is new (or newly restructured). They haven’t had anyone go through the four years of the major yet, so I think they may not realize all the kinks that are in it. I only realized it because I spent many hours analyzing requirements going forward.
I know that my flagship will give 6 hours of credit for a 5 (and maybe a 4) on some AP tests. APUSH is one. So there may be more than 3 hours of credit for some AP tests.
But it sounds like not all 60 credits are really useful in any case, which is not surprising. There’s bound to be a lot of overlap with that many credits.
^^^^This. My daughter’s school charges more for “upper level” tuition. One you’ve completed 55 credits tuition goes up. So she’s not claiming all her available credits. We calculated that she can claim 9 AP credits without triggering upper level tuition before her third year of college.
@romanigypsyeyes@bluebayou Thanks for the insight. I will discuss with her the option of not doing the honors program if she would rather do one of the minors she was interested in instead (or semester study abroad, etc.). Good to know it is possible to get funded for grad school without Latin honors. She has a job conducting research in her field and other research experience, so that won’t be a problem. It is helpful to know that the research can count more in grad applications than “honors.”
(this is said slightly in jest as I only applied to two programs.)