How old were you when you graduated from a college or university with a BA, BS, or other four-year degree?
Studies show that most people take six years to earn their bachelor’s degree, and only 19% of people graduate in 4 years. How about you?
I graduated with a BA almost six weeks after my 22nd birthday, and I don’t feel like I was that young…of course, I didn’t realize at the time that only 5% of college students with ADHD like I’d been graduate at any age vs ~35% of people more neurotypical, so what do I know?
I was 22. When I went to high school in Ontario back in the 1970s, we had five years of high school (not four). So you graduated at 18, went to a four-year bachelor’s program, and graduated at 22.
I was 19. My mom had me skip a couple of grades in grammar school. Intellectually I did fine, but socially it wasn’t easy being younger than everyone else.
I couldn’t afford college after high school, so I took a few years off to work. Then the army decided that I would make better cannon fodder than academic fodder, delaying some more. Finally made it at 26.
If only I had graduated from HS four years later, as they built a beautiful new Junior College campus 3 blocks from my home then. Would have been ideal, but by the time it was built, I didn’t need it anymore.
Took me five years to get my “four” year degree, largely because I had to balance going to school with working sufficient to pay for rent, utilities, food, and tuition. I was going to school enough to be defined as full time, but not taking the maximum class load per semester. Was working about 25-30 hours a week.
I started university at 22, after the army (too soon after the army, in retrospect - maybe I should have take a year off like some of my friends; but then, I wouldn’t have met my wife…). Did my 3 years, but didn’t finish all my obligations, so I was left without a degree. Worked, traveled, lived in Manhattan for two years, and at 29 I decided to go back to school. Did a year of a day and a half of classes per week, finally finished all those damn papers, and graduated at 30.
I skipped a semester after I left Kent State and before I enrolled in the U of Colorado, Denver, and then spent a final semester at UCD picking up requirements for an American degree after I got back from study abroad at the U of Lancaster; I only took English lit and history courses while in the UK and had to have a certain number of science and math, and language, classes to graduate. So I took computer programming, some astronomy, and 101 Russian.
I started college right after high school, but I quit after a year and joined the Navy. Three years later, I went back and finished my degree 3 years after that. I voted 25, but I was a month away from turning 26.
I quit college when I was nineteen. I began attending community college when I was 33, graduated when I was 34, and finally completed a university degree when I was 53.
I always get annoyed by these articles- generally speaking, 12 credits per semester is considered full time for the purposes of tuition, financial aid etc. But a bachelor’s degree is typically 120 credits and will take 5 years (10 semesters) at 12 credits per semester. The articles rarely point out that these studies apply to public colleges , which often have a very different student population than private colleges and taking five or six years is not always a bad thing for those students. For example, like **Broomstick **, I was a full-time student ( 12 credits) while working enough hours to be considered full time at many jobs ( 30-35 hours a week). I needed to work that much to pay my tuition, so there was no option under which I graduated in four years - either I took five or six years or I didn’t attend ( or graduate) at all.
Date earned–a good and possibly telling detail. I wonder if people today are more or less likely to go to college right after high school and then knock out a(n American) bachelor’s in 4 years.
I joined the Army after high school. Actually a year after high school, after getting fed up with working fast food jobs. Then I spent 5 years in the Army, taking no classes. Then I got out and got a four year electrical engineering degree in three and a half years. Which would have been impressive if I wasn’t already 27 (this was in 2009, for the curious). But a lot of my peers were taking five or even six years to finish their engineering degrees.
I graduated six months early with a double major. I had AP credits from high school that knocked out a few graduation requirements and I took one summer course to fill in an elective.
I should have graduated high school a year early. The graduation requirements when I started high school included passing four years of Gym and English. Other subjects required three of less years. To cut costs, administrators dropped the Gym requirement to two years. My Junior year of high school I took both English and Journalism, which fulfilled the English requirement. I don’t think that school administrators realized that by dropping the Gym requirement, several Juniors were suddenly eligible to graduate a year early. Late in the year, they changed the graduation requirements again. But, they couldn’t just say that Journalism didn’t satisfy the English requirement because several of the students were Seniors who wouldn’t graduate without credit for it. So, the administration arbitrarily decided that Journalism would only count as an English requirement if the student was a Senior. They averted their crisis and I had to spend another year in high school. The good news was that I took all the AP courses that allowed me to graduate college early, so I saved some tuition and on net, it only cost me a few extra months of my life rather than a whole year.