<p>I tried searching for this topic but I did not find one that would specifically answer my question. If this is a common question, I apologize. </p>
<p>Background:</p>
<p>I am a junior civil eng. major. Late in my sophmore year I changed my major from environmental eng. to civil eng. This put me 6 credits behind. In order to graduate in 4 years I will have to take 20 credits this spring semester. I would rather not take that much of a credit load, especially with engineering curriculum.</p>
<p>My Question:</p>
<p>How do grad schools look at the “four year plan”? Do they favor students who graduate “on time”? Do they consider students who take a longer amount of time to be poor students? Or do they simple not take this into consideration at all?</p>
<p>Explanation: </p>
<p>I would like to go to a decent grad school (CMU for example) so if switching to a 4.5 or 5 year plan will hurt my chances I will just man up and handle my load. If it does not hurt my admissions chances, I will go ahead and switch to a more comfortable schedule (roughly 16 credit semesters).</p>
<p>Any imput or similiar experiences would be greatly appreciated!</p>
<p>I guess you will get responses from a few who think graduating in 4.5 years will be frowned upon by some grad schools.</p>
<p>From MY experience…it matters not one bit.</p>
<p>If you have a good GPA, I don’t think they’d consider you to be a poor student.</p>
<p>The only problem this will create for you is a gap between finishing undergrad and starting grad school. Not every school takes new grad students in the spring, and if you want financial aid, you usually have to apply for the fall.</p>
<p>Grad schools couldn’t care less if it took you 5 years to graduate or 3 years. What they care about is your grades, recommendations, experience and the results you can produce. Finishing in 4.5 years is definitely the smarter option. In fact, rather than having a 20 hour semester, use that extra semester as a way to make sure you have light loads from here on out and that should help keep your grades high to boot.</p>
<p>I finished in 3.5 years and don’t think it either helped or hurt my applications. After I finished in December I got a job working with one of my old professors in a temporary position doing all sorts of projects around the lab that needed to be finished up but never had been. It lasted nine months (until I left for grad school), but it helped me pay off my only non-subsidized loan and was a great learning experience.</p>
<p>If you’re applying for a PhD program, I highly doubt anyone would notice. Committees (which are often just 1 person) usually look at the transcript for grades and classes, but don’t really look close enough to care about the number of semesters. For a non-research MS program, that sort of thing will be noticed, but usually not considered. The programs exist as cash cows, so the departments usually admit strictly based on GRE, GPA, previous school, and previous degree (and sometimes work experience).</p>
<p>Thanks for the helpful and timely responses!</p>