<p>Greetings,
I am a 2nd semester sophomore (or junior, depending) majoring in Classics (Latin focus) and minoring in Linguistics at the South Carolina Honors College at USouthCarolina (ranked 34th in the country for Linguistics). (<a href=“http://www.stat.tamu…rc41.html#area7%5B/url%5D”>http://www.stat.tamu…rc41.html#area7</a>)
I have a 4.0 and have finished the classes I didn’t have desire to study for (lab sciences, math, &c.) leaving me with only languages and linguistics courses to take.
For personal reasons, I have a strong desire to graduate a year early as it would open up a fantastic possibility in my personal life but I do not want to hurt my future career. By the end of spring semester next year, I will have taken 3 years of Latin and the equivalent of 2 years of Greek, 2 years of German, at least 1 year of Old English and 1 year of Old Norse. I want to eventually get a Phd in Historical Linguistics from somewhere nice (Cornell, UPenn, Harvard, Minnesota, &c.), regardless of whether I get a prefatory Masters degree. Theoretically, if I stayed for a full 4 years I would graduate with a Classics major and Linguistics and German double minor, while 3 years would leave me with a German cognate instead . I will have written a senior thesis (ideally doing some comparative linguistics with my familiar languages) and possibly have presented at a conference by this point next year.
My ultimate question is, if I go ahead and graduate early, will I be a highly competitive candidate for these sorts of MA programs or would I be shooting myself in the foot by pushing forward for person reasons?</p>
<p>There was a recent thread on this over at: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/1260670-graduating-3-years.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/graduate-school/1260670-graduating-3-years.html</a></p>
<p>Might be a good starting point.</p>