So this website, Texas State University - San Marcos (TxSt) - Reviews & Rankings, tells you the 4-year-graduation rates of different colleges. The graduation rates are listed at the bottom, and different colleges can be found by typing their name in the search-engine at the top. In the college that’s linked, Texas State-San Marcos, it was only 24% of students graduate in 4 years. Now, I’ve been looking up the ages of people who are upon graduation from these universities with low graduation rates. If the majority of these people take longer than 4 years, than the majority should be older than 22 upon graduating. However, this isn’t what I’ve been finding. Almost everyone I’ve looked up who went to colleges with supposedly low graduation rates was 21-22 when graduating. What am I doing wrong? Where do I need to be looking to find results to accurately reflect these statistics?
You seem overly invested in the answer to this question. You are graduating in December 2016, correct? There is nothing you can change about that or your age when you graduate.
Most traditional students in the US who graduate in four years after finishing high school and starting college will be approximately 22 years old, give or a take a year. My D went to college straight from high school. She just graduated in exactly four years, and she is 22 years old.
But the graduates I’ve been looking up went to colleges where statistically, the majority of students do not graduate in 4 years. That’s why I’m so mystified.
Well, obviously that doesn’t make sense. We can do the math ourselves and know that unless one is a student who begins college at a very young age (happens, but is not the norm) and they finish in four years or more, they will be 21 at the youngest, and 21 plus however many extra years it takes to get out.
What difference does it make? Why is this so important to you?
I’ll be 22 years and 3 months old when I graduate and I don’t want to stand out as graduating late.
You won’t.
If this is a legitimate poster (and I’m less convinced with each thread), I truly encourage you to seek therapy. It’s not healthy to be this obsessed with not fitting every statistic and caring so much about what others do. It’s obviously causing you to be stressed and it’s bordering on obsession. That’s just not healthy.
My eldest is at Texas State and went strait to Tx State right out of high school. X Will be 21 later this month. Just finished sophomore year. If X keeps on the current track, graduation will be in 4 and X will be one month from 23 years old. If X alters the course, X will end up being almost 24. GASP, X is a student athlete so is not incognito and no one cares X’s age at graduation.
Unless you have progeria, no one is going to notice or care about your age at graduation.
Stop worrying. You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.
That’s hard to do when my classmates think I’m slow.
Is that because of your age or because of other factors? No one is going to think you are “slow” in graduating college at 22. If it makes you feel better, my twins were 22 and then turned 23 in August a few months later.
I’m 60. Up till now I thought the normal age to start college was 18 and graduate was 22. Isn’t that what happens if you start first grade at age six and keep going. I’m too tired to do that math, but that seems correct to me.
It wasn’t unusual in our neighborhood for kids to start first grade at age seven, especially if they were athletes. There has been a lot of discussion about holding kids back on purpose. So there have to be lots of those kids graduating “on time” at 23. Right?
Who is going to know your precise age, anyway? Unless you wear something with your birthdate emblazoned on it.
People are thinking about you and your age a lot less than you think they are.
Everyone already knows my precise age though. I told them by birthday because I didn’t think it was a big deal at first to be 22 and still in undergrad.
You’ve gotten the same answer on multiple, now closed threads. 22 is not old to be graduating from college and even if it were it wouldn’t matter. At all.
“Everyone” does not know your precise age. Employers won’t, hundreds of new people you meet later in life won’t, and by a year after you graduate, no one will care.
Everybody has issues (hey, I just washed dishes because my mother conditioned me to think that the firefighters would judge me for leaving dirty dishes in the sink if the house caught fire in the middle of the night 
) so if your issue is that you feel like you should graduate before you’re 22, take extra classes now to graduate early.
But really, no one cares. I taught an upperlevel college class today and we were talking about 9/11, which is an event where your specific age might matter. But no one talked about age, and the students ranged in age from perhaps 19-20 to mid 30s.
Dedicating this amount of time and energy on an issue no one else cares about, despite how much you think they do.
Also - not understanding statistics.
My D graduated exactly on time and is 22 years and 5 months old. She absolutely does not stand out as “graduating late.”
Sorry, but your point of view on this subject is not only objectively wrong, but bizarre as well.
“take extra classes now to graduate early.”
That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I was originally set to graduate at 22 years and 8 months old, and the extra classes I took and the summer classes I’m taking now have put me on track to graduate at 22 years and 3 months old. There is nothing I can do to graduate before my 22nd birthday.
Nobody cares. The only time I ever referenced the actual time spent in college was when I got a security clearance ; the USG needed me to account for my time
Get over it.