In some schools, you have to get permission from your academic advisor to take 18 or more a semester. The actual classes you take to earn these are just as vital as the number of credits. There are three categories of classes. Now that you know more about the basic facts of what makes up a college schedule, here are a few tips to keep in mind to get the most out of your academic career.
Scheduling a course for 8 a. More importantly, if you do not trust yourself to be able to get to class this early, avoid putting yourself in this situation. A bad grade from poor attendance could result in you having to take a class over again, which could sabotage your early graduation plans and your GPA. If you think you would prefer early-morning classes, consider scheduling one or two easy classes for 8 a. Once you see how you this goes, you can add more next semester. Pay attention to the time between your classes, and do your best to schedule all your courses in one block, rather than having them at hour intervals throughout the day.
If you only have to worry about leaving your room once, there is less opportunity to skip class. While the above two tips are smart things to keep in mind, be ready to disregard them if you need to schedule a must-have course. You might have to eat lunch at 2 p.
Having your classes in a block is ideal, but scheduling the classes you need should take precedent. If you think this will be a problem for you, fast online degrees are a great way to get a lot of classes in a more flexible timeframe. College scheduling can get very stressful and hectic, so it is invaluable to have someone double-checking your work. Advisors can be vital resources when it comes to being able to finish college quickly.
Though we have already been over how critical it is to decide on a major as quickly as possible, it is still prudent to prepare yourself for the possibility of changing your mind. According to a study released by the Department of Education, 30 percent of undergraduate students change their major at least once within the first three years of college enrollment.
To make this transition smoother, the smart thing to do is to schedule your GenEd courses first. If you start with a bunch of classes for your major and change your mind, you will end up earning a lot of useless credits.
Should you start with GenEds, however, and later decide on a different direction, most of those courses will probably still count for your major, and you will remain on track. So, what does a three-year college schedule look like? You did your due diligence in pre-college planning and took a few AP courses and even a CLEP exam before you got on campus.
You got a four on an AP calculus exam, a five on the stat exam, and another five on the U. Plus, you lived in Mexico for a summer and learned how to speak Spanish with a skill level approaching fluency. That is three credits for each AP exam and six for the Spanish, since you were able to test out of two levels of Spanish.
These 15 credits will count toward your GenEd courses. You only need more credits to graduate. Your freshman year, you make a prudent choice — you decide to only schedule GenEds just in case you decide to change your major.
Since GenEds are usually less rigorous than courses required for your major, you load up on them and take 18 credits each semester, for a total of 36 credits your first year.
You have 69 credits remaining. You talk to your advisor at the beginning of your sophomore year to find out what lower-level biology courses are prerequisites before upper-level ones.
You take all of these you can this year, 15 credits one semester and 18 the next. You have 36 credits left for your third year. You also take a gym class for a GenEd this summer, so you can concentrate on organic chemistry while still earning credits. You have 30 credits left for your third and final year. I did a little bit of studying for the exam with the help of a study guide and ended up scoring a 5 on the test.
That same class at a liberal arts college like mine would cost in the thousands. I started my college search VERY early. By ninth grade, I had started fleshing out what I thought I wanted in a college, and by tenth, I had a list of schools I planned to apply to and had my copy of The Best Colleges earmarked for the details about those schools. While this is definitely earlier than you really need to start planning for college, it helped me shape my choices in high school.
My senior year finally rolled around, and it was time to start putting together my college applications. I applied to 10 schools to give myself choices once I saw the final costs after scholarship awards. My college acceptance letters started coming in along with their scholarship options. I put together a letter and a packet outlining my high school accolades along with recommendations from volunteer work I had done and took it back to the school and pushed for more money.
I let them know I really did want to attend, but the cost was too high. I decided then that I would be able to make that work, and sent my acceptance and filled out the loan paperwork.
While I had set myself up for a more reasonable college cost through my high school preparations, I then had to continue that focus through college. I knew from early on that the environment was really important to me and that steered me toward an environmental science degree. Because I was at a liberal arts school, that meant I got a wide range of topics to choose from and had the opportunity to take a lot of really great classes. I compromised by taking enough classes in both areas that they ended up being very robus minors really — majors without the written thesis.
While I did get to take quite a few Spanish and history classes, I stayed focused on the requirements for my environmental science degree. Each semester, I picked classes that qualified for my major or for the basic graduation requirements. After my first semester and I had settled in to the routine of college, I started looking for on campus job opportunities.
It was a great fit and I loved getting paid for helping other students with their papers, though it was a little intimidating at first to review a senior thesis as a second semester freshman. I worked there hours a week through the rest of my time in college, and it more than paid for my regular expenses since room and board were covered through tuition and my loans.
Like the AP classes I took to avoid math in college, I listened to my friends who had taken Introduction to Chemistry our freshman year. Even for those who really liked the hard sciences, it was a really hard class with a lot of additional lab time. So I looked up community college classes in my hometown for the summer quarter, and found a chemistry class offered online.
I confirmed with my school that it was an allowable transfer, and I took the class the summer after my freshman year. I was working a full time internship, but as it was an entry level community college class, it was a really reasonable addition to my summer.
And when I went back to school in the fall, I had fulfilled my chemistry requirement. Summer had arrived.
A week later, I hopped on the bus and headed to my full time summer internship. Instead, I got an internship at an architecture firm that was working on green building projects and I spent that summer learning about green building certifications and basic computer drawing. I had a lot of fun, learned quite a bit, and went back to school with a nicely padded bank account.
In hindsight, I definitely could have saved more of my pay checks, but I did have a lot of fun that summer as well. I paid for all of my books and fees out of pocket instead of rolling them into my loans like so many of my friends. My coach was very strict and had a no-tolerance rule regarding drinking and generally being a stupid college student. If you were discovered to have been drinking — or even had your picture posted online with a red cup of arguable substance — you were off the team.
While his rules felt really strict at the time, they kept us out of a lot of trouble. By being expected to make good decisions and be aware of how we were perceived by others, my coach taught us a lot more than just how to get better at playing ball. My favorite part of each semester was always looking at the full course catalogue and deciding which classes I would take.
After the limited options in high school, the list was endless and amazing. The problem is that there is no guarantee that doing well on an AP exam will be enough to get your child out of required college courses. Incoming freshmen may still be required to take prerequisite classes toward their degree — and that can cost time and money during the first year. Head off this ambiguity by speaking directly to the registrar or the department heads at the college your child is interested in.
The best three-year programs offer help on how to complete the degree in a shortened period, encourage students to hone in on their majors early, and help students plan to handle a heavier load of coursework, said Weinstein at the Progressive Policy Institute. Accelerated degrees can require students to take a minimum of 15 credit hours per semester — the equivalent of five or six classes, said Private Student Loans Guru's Kantrowitz.
Students also need to coordinate their summer coursework: If they take a class at a community college close to home during vacation, they need to make sure that their school will view it as the equivalent of a course that's required for their degree. Get acquainted with what an accelerated bachelor's degree might mean for your child's financial aid package.
Year-round Pell grants, which give students percent of their original award, may be available to your child to help offset the cost of summer classes. You should also understand how your child's school charges tuition: Is it a flat fee up to a certain amount of credits? Or does the school charge on a per-credit basis? Your high school senior doesn't know this key fact about college Even financial aid won't help you cover these college expenses Student loan interest rates take leap.
What borrowers should do.
0コメント