Graduating from College Early: Everything You Need to Know
/Should you graduate early? Learn the pros and cons, plus how to finish college ahead of time
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Part 1: Introduction
Many people simply assume that college takes four years to complete. However, as you move through your freshman and sophomore years of undergraduate education, or if you’re still in high school, you may begin to wonder: what if I could finish college early?
Students consider graduating from college early for a variety of reasons. A common reason is the desire to save on tuition and other associated college expenses. Based on the average cost of attending a private college in 2020–2021 as reported by the College Board, a student who graduates in three years will save about $50,000 over a student who takes four years to graduate.
There are also non-financial reasons to consider finishing school in three or fewer years. Graduating early can seem like a tantalizing option for students who have a clear idea of their career goals and who want to enter the workforce early to get a jump-start on being in “the real world.”
In this guide, we’ll explore the circumstances under which graduating early might be the right choice for you. We’ll also assess when it might make sense to stick it out for the full four years. If you’ve already decided that graduating early is the right choice, we’ve included concrete steps you can take to turn that goal into a reality.
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Part 2: Pros and cons of graduating college early
Why graduate early?
What’s making you think about graduating early? Maybe your course load is really difficult this semester. You’re burnt out, and you just want to be done with labs and exams and all-nighters. If you’re impatient to be done with college, or you’re unhappy with your courses, social life, or extracurricular activities, graduating early might not be the solution.
Instead, it might just be time to make some changes in your college life: join a new club, switch your major, or try a summer internship in a new field.
But maybe you’re pretty happy at college. You like your major and your activities, but you’re most excited for what comes after graduation. Maybe you want an extra year to focus on studying for the MCAT without the pressure of classes and the financial drain of tuition. Or maybe you’re itching to turn your summer journalism internship into a full-time job—but it seems crazy to do both full-time reporting and school. In these situations, graduating early is a means to pursuing goals you’re already working towards.
In addition to the reasons you might have for graduating early, it’s also worth considering who’s making you think about graduating early to begin with. Think about whether the desire to graduate early is coming from you, or if it’s coming from someone else, like your parents, peers, or professors.
And if you want to graduate early for purely financial reasons—maybe you’re the oldest of three and your parents are trying to conserve college funds for your siblings—have you already weighed other financial options, including scholarship applications, and decided early graduation makes the most sense?
In short, you should be asking yourself whether graduating early is in line with your long-term personal, academic, and practical goals.
Benefits of graduating college early
Though it’s an individual choice for everyone, we’ve compiled some benefits you might reap from graduating early.
Save on tuition and make money earlier. During the 2020–2021 school year, the average yearly cost of private college was $50,770, and public college for in-state students was $22,180 (for a breakdown of costs, see the data set linked earlier from the College Board). Student loan debt in 2021 is the highest it’s ever been, with borrowers owing a collective $1.73 trillion. On average, borrowers from the class of 2021 owe $36,900.
Graduating a semester early can save money and soothe financial stress. Entering the job market in December or January, rather than waiting until May when you’re scheduled to graduate, not only saves you tuition money and means fewer potential loans, but means you can start earning sooner.
In 2019, college graduates could expect an average starting salary of $53,889, according to CNBC. Plus, graduating during the winter means you’ll be sending out your resume when fewer recent college grads are entering the job market. You might get a jump-start on finding your dream job, rather than having to wait another six months to start applying.
Prepare for grad school. If you’re going on to medical school, law school, or another graduate program, you know you’re going to spend much of your twenties in school.
Finishing your undergrad degree a year or semester early can shave some time off your total years spent in school. You can use the extra time to prepare for entrance exams like the MCAT or the GRE. Or, you could use the extra time to travel or work before hitting the books again.
There are other ways to learn. You could use the year off to pursue fellowships like the Fulbright, the Rhodes, or the Marshall, or programs like the Peace Corps or Teach for America. These programs offer opportunities for travel, exploration, and social connectivity, much like college.
If you’ve spent much of college in a programmed, intense environment, leaving early can give you the opportunity to step away and reconnect with why you wanted to learn in the first place.
Disadvantages of graduating early
Even if you’ve taken a mental inventory and decided graduating early might be a good option for you, it’s worth considering what you lose when you leave college early.
Missing out on the non-academic aspects of college. College is a time for personal growth and building your social network (which might, in years to come, grow into a professional network). It’s also a time to experiment and make mistakes with limited consequences, when your social and academic life is intertwined. Leaving early cuts down on the time you have to develop new interests, strengthen friendships, and think about what you want your future to look like.
Graduating early could also impact relationships with professors. If you’re overloading your schedule, you’ll have less time to devote to each class. This could cost you great recommendation letters in the future. Remember that there are other ways to accelerate: taking graduate classes while still an undergraduate, for example, could help fast-track a grad degree down the road.
Less time and flexibility on the academic and extracurricular fronts. Taking a heavier course load can lead to rigidity in your academic and extracurricular life. You’ll have less time to take elective classes outside your major, or to check out new activities. Switching majors will be difficult. You might also not have enough time to study abroad if you can’t transfer in enough credits from international institutions.
Fewer internship, externship, and research opportunities. If you’re using your summers and school breaks to get ahead on coursework, you might have less time to pursue internships and externships, which are valuable to employers and helpful for exploring careers.
Some sectors, like tech, finance, consulting, and journalism, often hire directly out of a pool of former interns. If you skip your last college summer—and an advanced internship—it could hurt your job prospects down the line.
In addition, if you’re grad-school-bound, developing research relationships with professors can be helpful for admission (and for growing your intellectual interests). If you’re devoting summer and night hours to extra classes or studying for an overloaded class schedule, you’ll have less time to build mentorship relationships through research experiences.
Financial burden. At first glance, it seems like graduating early = saving money. But remember: as soon as you graduate, your student loan clock starts ticking. This can be a difficult transition for students, and it can be an unnecessary stressor to put upon yourself earlier than your scheduled graduation date.
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Part 3: How does graduating college early affect grad school admissions?
If you’ve got your sights set on attending graduate school, you’re probably wondering how graduating from college early will impact your odds of admission. Will graduate schools view your ability to work hard and get things done in a positive light, or will your younger age count against you?
While it can vary from field to field, the general answer is: neither. Your age and the time it takes you to graduate from college are, in and of themselves, relatively unimportant. That said, if you have terrific grades and have excelled in advanced coursework, adcoms may view the fact that you managed to do so in fewer than four years as further proof of your talent.
We say “further proof” because your grades and coursework—i.e. how prepared you are to succeed in grad school—are what matter most.
You might have heard from peers or professors that graduating early will hurt your chances of getting into grad school. There is some truth in this conventional wisdom, and that’s due to the fact that many applicants who graduate early have only taken the bare minimum of required courses and have less research or internship experience. When adcoms see that these applicants haven’t yet explored advanced topics, they may wonder how they’ll handle the rigors of grad school.
So, to determine how graduating early will affect your chances of getting into grad school, ask yourself how it will impact the strength of your applications.
Does graduating college early look good for medical school?
Because we receive the most questions about getting into medical school, in this section we’ll address what impact graduating early can have on the med school admissions process specifically.
Getting into medical school is challenging, and many applicants get nervous when they see that the average medical school matriculation age is 24. They confuse correlation with causation and think that they need to wait to apply simply because they’re younger than average.
As noted above, your age is far less important than the quality of your application. Some students are sufficiently strong applicants after three years of college whereas, for many others, graduating in three years means a lower GPA, less research and extracurricular experience, distant relationships with mentors, and missing out on opportunities like study abroad, coursework outside of the sciences, and campus life.
Similarly, some of our best students go straight through from undergrad to med school whereas others need more time to strengthen their candidacy via gap year activities like Special Master’s Programs, post-bacc programs, MCAT study, and so on. This can be true for four-year and early graduates alike.
Nevertheless, age isn’t always irrelevant. If an applicant has graduated from college remarkably early—say, around age 20—either because they started college at a younger-than-usual age or because they’ve condensed their college education down to fewer than three years, we’ve observed that med schools will take their age into account. That said, adcoms’ primary concern in these situations is usually whether the applicant is sufficiently committed to medicine. Because younger applicants can struggle to get the right extracurricular opportunities, it’s often the case that they simply need more time to build an applicant profile that demonstrates this commitment.
The bottom line is: it all comes down to the strength of your application at the time that you apply.
(Suggested reading: Medical School Requirements: The Definitive Guide)
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Part 4: How to graduate college early
If you’ve read through the pros and cons and decided that graduating early is right for you, you’re probably wondering how to make it happen. Below, we’ve outlined steps you can take to finish college ahead of time.
Step 1: Start planning in high school.
Take as many AP, IB, or dual-enrollment classes as possible.
Public colleges tend to be more generous in giving students credit for APs, especially since there are sometimes state laws in place ensuring that schools award credit for certain scores on the test. According to U.S. News & World Report, there are more than 20 states for which this is the case. For example, the UC system awards credit for any AP score above a 3.
If you have enough AP credits, you could essentially skip your freshman year. This is less likely to be the case at private institutions, especially very selective colleges like Dartmouth, Brown, or the California Institute of Technology, which may offer acceleration but not credit for APs.
However, graduating early at more selective private schools isn’t impossible: at Johns Hopkins, for example, 20% of students graduate early.
It’s also worth looking into CLEP: an examination program through the College Board that awards college credit in a number of subjects. Over 2,900 colleges recognize and award credit for CLEP exams.
Step 2: Look for colleges that offer designated three-year degree programs.
In addition to schools that more readily accept AP scores for credit, some programs are specifically designed to help you graduate early. Sometimes called “degree in three” or “three-year bachelor’s” programs, they link students to resources for their accelerated learning.
Some examples include NYU’s Accelerate program, the Degree in 3 track at Ball State University, Hartwick College’s Three-Year Bachelor’s, the University of Iowa’s Degree in Three, or the three-year bachelor’s at the University of San Francisco.
For a full list of schools—public and private—offering three-year degree programs, check out this list from the Progressive Policy Institute. These programs often require students to apply for entry their freshman year, and they provide guidance throughout students’ undergraduate career.
Step 3: Talk to your academic advisor early and set a plan.
To graduate in three years, students should expect to take five or six classes (or about fifteen to sixteen credit hours) rather than four or five per semester. It’s also worth being clear about how early you want to graduate: are you hoping to graduate a semester early, or a full year? The number of credits you’ll need to take depends on this decision.
Also, keep your desire to graduate in three years in mind when choosing a major. A degree in three program may only support certain majors (UIowa, for example, offers only six majors through their three-year degree program, many of them humanities- and business- rather than sciences-focused).
If you’re planning to do a credit-heavy major in the sciences, choosing a college that accepts APs for credit is particularly important, as is planning out which semesters you will take required science courses.
Choose a major you like, and stick with it. Switching majors can be a huge impediment to finishing college early. Spend time early on deciding what sparks your interest, and stay with that major.
Step 4: Study over breaks.
Summer classes, night school, or online courses are all great ways to fast-track your learning. If your school offers internships for college credit, take advantage of that resource to engage in experiential learning and gain some extra credits. It’s also worth looking into taking summer classes at a community college if your four-year university accepts the transfer credit, since tuition is likely lower.
It’s also a good plan to get through any general education classes or distributional requirement classes early in your college career. That way, you get your required coursework out of the way and buy yourself a little more time to decide on a major.
Final thoughts
Only you can decide whether finishing college early is the right thing for you. Consult your academic advisors, deans, friends, and trusted professors. Choosing to graduate early will depend on a number of things, like where you go to college, how much the institution supports accelerated learning, and how well you can make a plan and stick to it. Take the time you need to decide what’s right for your unique financial, personal, and academic situation—and good luck with whatever path you choose.
About the Author
Dr. Shirag Shemmassian is the Founder of Shemmassian Academic Consulting and one of the world's foremost experts on medical school admissions. For nearly 20 years, he and his team have helped thousands of students get into medical school using his exclusive approach.
