<p>Is it possible to graduate with exactly 42 credits?</p>
<p>(5) AP U.S. (3 elective credits) & hopefully (5) AP Calc AB = 4 credits.
So need 38 credits to graduate? At 12 credits/year that’s just over 3 years.</p>
<p>Plan is Econ.</p>
<p>Students have no trouble with the 42 credits. It’s an average of 3.5 per quarter with no credits from AP or UChciago credit exams. Most go above and beyond the 42 credits.</p>
<p>You are going to face a couple of issues.</p>
<p>First, even though it’s possible to take 36 credits in three years, it’s not possible to take 38 without paying extra tuition, either during a summer term or for an overload during the regular academic year. And no one really recommends doing the overload.</p>
<p>Second, you are going to have to devote a significant number of credits to completing the Core, 18 by my calculation. (9 HUM/SOSC/CIV/ARTS, 4 BIO/PHYSCI, 2 math, 3 language) You may need more than 2 additional quarters of math for an econ major.</p>
<p>Third, because of where you are in math and APs, you may not be able to start taking any of the major-sequence economics courses until your second year. Since some of them are cumulative, you are going to wind up with a very heavy, demanding courseload your third year. The good news is that the minimum for an economics major is pretty small, so you will probably be able to fit enough courses into your schedule. But you will be competing for jobs before you have even completed the core sequence, and it’s unlikely you will be able to swing an honors thesis.</p>
<p>I read freshman can’t enroll in 1st ECON Core unless they pass the ECON placement.
Any idea how to study for ECON placement test?</p>
<p>(@JHS) What do you mean by competing for jobs before completing the core?</p>
<p>As I understand it (and my understanding could well be imperfect, there were no econ majors in my family), the core econ fundamentals sequence is four quarters long. Maybe you could start it in spring of your first year, but you might have to wait until fall second year. </p>
<p>A lot of the sort of hiring econ majors drool over happens in the fall and winter. So you could be looking for a job for that crucial last summer before graduation when you have 0-1 quarters of the econ fundamentals sequence completed, and you could be looking for a “real” (post-graduation) job before completing the last quarter of the sequence. You will probably have taken some of your econ electives by then, but they may not be as advanced as the ones you would take after completing the fundamentals sequence and the related math/stats.</p>
<p>Generally, most econ majors will have completed the fundamentals sequence by fall of their third year (the year before their last year in college), and many will have done so earlier (because they came with more math and more econ APs than you have). You will be competing for a summer job with them when you have a very limited econ resume, and you will be competing for a permanent job with them when they have had a full year to do sophisticated work after the fundamentals sequence.</p>
<p>I should add that some version of this will be true wherever you go to college, if it has a strong econ program that attracts good students, and if you are trying to graduate in three years. My impression, however, is that few other colleges make you take so much math before starting to complete your econ requirements.</p>
<p>What’s the hurry? You mean to tell me that you have earned the privilege to attend UChicago for 4 years and you want to finish in 3? Unless you are a pre-med major thinking about becoming a neurosurgeon or orthopedic surgeon the 4th year will be priceless in the long run.</p>
<p>The College tuition cost would be huge incentive to graduate early. </p>
<p>I was also researching the same issue. If you have significant AP classes- say 9 or 10. So, the issue is whether to retake these classes which would hopefully give you a strong grade buffer for more challenging courses later on vs push on for earlier graduation.</p>
<p>Are there any threads discussing this? </p>
<p>Math at Chicago is not for faint-hearted. I know people who graduated with bad GPA when they took the toughest math courses based on their performance at high school.</p>