# How old were you when you got a 4-year university or college degree? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [May 23, 2019, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390 "2019-05-23T03:09:09Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![doreen](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/858c86/32.png) [@doreen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doreen)\ **Post date:** [May 27, 2019, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/81 "2019-05-27T20:53:42Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > That was the same at my school, although we didn’t do “credit hours,” just “credits.” You were expected to take 4 credits per trimester/quarter; you could take 5 if your advisor allowed it; 3 was minimum to be considered “full time.” I had a few quarters where I dropped a class and was down to 3… What do you mean by “expected”? Did they put you on probation or something if you only took 3 credits? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2019, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/82 "2019-05-28T01:02:03Z")
> [@Infovore](#): > > My school, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (CA), had a similar thing - you registered under the priority system, from 1 to 9. 1 was usually for incoming freshmen in their first quarter (don’t want to spook 'em too early) and they cycled everyone else through the others. If you got a low priority number, you could usually get most of your courses. If you got a high one…good luck, and hope you like taking totally meaningless courses or very specific major-related stuff. Somebody at the school even started a band called “Ninth Priority” back then. A lot of students didn’t graduate on time because they had bad luck with priority and couldn’t get their general-ed courses. > > I think they use a different system now, but that one sucked. Ours were actually by class and THEN by first letter of your last name. So grad students, then seniors/fifth years, juniors, sophomores, freshmen. IIRC, there were credit hour thresholds for each ‘class’- like 30 for becoming a sophomore, 60 to be a junior, 90 to be a senior, etc… So if you were a senior and your letter was in the first group, you had your choice of classes. If you were a freshman in the last group, you were making do. In large part though, the seniors and freshmen didn’t have it as bad as the sophomores and juniors- that’s where it was tough to get what you were looking for. And… I have this weird recollection that students who were in the honors program got to register first before others in their class. ---
**Author:** ![Misnomer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/misnomer/32/14897_2.png) [@Misnomer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Misnomer)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2019, 5:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/83 "2019-05-28T17:17:25Z")
> [@Velocity](#): > > Wow, we have a lot of early achievers here. One-third of people who voted in the thread, got their degree at age 21 or earlier. What **pulykamell** said. My birthday is in late September: I went straight from high school through four years of college, and graduated “on time” at age 21. I was 20 years old for the first 3-4 weeks of senior year. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2019, 7:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/84 "2019-05-28T19:16:02Z")
> [@Misnomer](#): > > What **pulykamell** said. My birthday is in late September: I went straight from high school through four years of college, and graduated “on time” at age 21. I was 20 years old for the first 3-4 weeks of senior year. Pretty much the same for me. The cutoff date in New York was Jan 1 and my birthday is in November, so I graduated at 21 with no acceleration. I could have graduated at 20 if I took the 3 years of junior high in 3 program, but my mother, foreseeing that there would be a war on and that is I graduated at 20 I would get my ass drafted, shot that idea down. ---
**Author:** ![eenerms](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/cdc98d/32.png) [@eenerms](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eenerms)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/85 "2019-05-29T14:27:29Z")
I skipped the first year out of high school, went to see relatives in Belgium. Worked all through University. Had mono twice and changed major once. ---
**Author:** ![typoink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ecb155/32.png) [@typoink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/typoink)\ **Post date:** [May 29, 2019, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/86 "2019-05-29T15:53:53Z")
1. Basically one extra year because I did a year of part-time community college after my underwhelming freshman year at university before re-enrolling in a different four-year school. For the record, I’m NOT an advocate of community college as a stepping stone to university. Lots of people said it was the smart move and my parents were big fans of the plan, but it was definitely the wrong path for me. CC classes were easier than high school and didn’t prepare me for university workload, and I felt pretty socially stunted because I didn’t attend the various 100-level classes at the school where it seems a lot of folks meet. My partner at the time followed a similar path and had a similar viewpoint. She actually finished an associate’s then went to university for a bachelor’s and felt like it was really hard to get “involved” with the school coming in as a junior. ---
**Author:** ![glowacks](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/glowacks/32/5548_2.png) [@glowacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/glowacks)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2019, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/87 "2019-06-01T23:46:11Z")
Finished classes at 22 in the fall, but graduation was after my birthday in the spring, so I technically didn’t graduate until I was 23. ---
**Author:** ![Ignatz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/3be4f8/32.png) [@Ignatz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ignatz)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2019, 1:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/88 "2019-06-02T01:57:46Z")
48, 24 years after a 2-year Associate in Engineering degree. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2019, 5:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/89 "2019-06-02T05:16:31Z")
> [@doreen](#): > > What do you mean by “expected”? Did they put you on probation or something if you only took 3 credits? No, not at all. That was just the standard definition for “full time.” You could take one fewer class or one more class and still be “full time,” but four classes/credits was the standard courseload and that vast majority of students at least started out the quarter with that many classes. I mean, if you want to take your time getting through college while paying the university full tuition, go ahead and take three classes per quarter. I’m sure they don’t mind. ---
**Author:** ![CelticKnot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/celticknot/32/3392_2.png) [@CelticKnot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CelticKnot)\ **Post date:** [June 2, 2019, 11:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390/90 "2019-06-02T23:50:02Z")
Like some others here, I graduated HS at 17, went to college right away and graduated at 21. I’m not exactly using that degree. I realized I was in the wrong major (art education) halfway through my senior year, but that’s a little late to change your major when your parents are paying for it, so I stuck it out, taught elementary at a school for a year, taught art one year (which conformed my suspicion), went back to teaching elementary for some years, got an elementary certificate, tried that for a few more years, got a useless master’s (the feds lied when they said it was a high-need field) and gave up on teaching for now. I figure someday I’ll try to get the last few Master’s level classes I need to get the endorsement I want and try teaching that. Sometimes I wish I had just gone into a trade. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-old-were-you-when-you-got-a-4-year-university-or-college-degree/834390.md?page=4)