# traditional college students-not so traditional after all...

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/traditional-college-students-not-so-traditional-after-all/555688>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [October 1, 2010, 3:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/traditional-college-students-not-so-traditional-after-all/555688 "2010-10-01T03:38:53Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\
**Post date:** [October 4, 2010, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/traditional-college-students-not-so-traditional-after-all/555688/21 "2010-10-04T16:56:29Z")

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> [@FordTaurusSHO94](#):
>
> Is it non-traditional to also be there when you’re below the age of most? I was born in the late spring and graduated high school a year early, so I was 17 for my first 2 semesters.

I was 16 for most of my first semester. I deliberately waited an extra year to graduate so I’d be 21. 🙂

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**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\
**Post date:** [October 5, 2010, 8:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/traditional-college-students-not-so-traditional-after-all/555688/22 "2010-10-05T08:12:54Z")

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> [@KarlGrenze](#):
>
> **Nava** , graduate school dynamics are much different from undergraduate courses, like you mentioned. Unless it is a very upper-level course in a concentration with very few students (I’m looking at you, Portuguese!), most required classes, even upper-level undergraduate courses, are offered every year (heck, even every semester). Granted, this may be the case with some engineering degrees, but then, most of those majors are already set at 5 years minimum instead of 4.
> 
> Graduate courses may be offered every other year, but the programs are such that the student will have no problem getting into the class once it is offered, even if it is “out of sequence”.

In this case, several undergraduate courses were being offered only in one given term, which for one course was one of the summer terms.

And this includes some which people in certain majors (like the enormously popular PreMed) needed to take, due to the way credit requirements were structured.

Oh, and some of them were pre-reqs for other also-required courses; again, they were required due to amount-of-credits required: there was no requirement to take “Natural Products” (name which did not in fact exist in that school), but you could not get the required amount of credits without taking “Natural Products”. So, get sick in your first summer, or simply do not realize you can’t go home for it, and you’re suddenly one year behind.

I’ve never said that school was well organized.

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