Graduated early Forum

[sudoku]

Due to financial reasons, I graduated in three years. My GPA does not reflect my abilities because of my increased courseloads, imho, but how do addcoms feel about this? Do they care that an applicant graduated an entire year ahead of schedule? If so, how much weight would they place on this situation? I did not enter college with AP credits. I took all courses at my undergraduate institution, taking 20+ hours per semester.

Thanks!

[manbearwig]

Due to financial reasons, I graduated in three years. My GPA does not reflect my abilities because of my increased courseloads, imho, but how do addcoms feel about this? Do they care that an applicant graduated an entire year ahead of schedule? If so, how much weight would they place on this situation? I did not enter college with AP credits. I took all courses at my undergraduate institution, taking 20+ hours per semester.

Thanks!

Because your GPA suffered, it may be a negative factor. As someone mentioned in a thread, being a year younger might be seen as a negative as well. Did you need to graduate early, like for financial reasons? If there was a valid reason (and not just because you wanted to) I'd address it in an addendum.

[Tifoso]

I think the consensus is that it doesn't matter one way or the other. That you might have worked extra hard is balanced out by the fact that you are a year younger and more inexperienced. I graduated in 2 years flat, w/o AP credits, and don't think it helped my applications at all, but also don't think it hurt them. It isn't a soft factor to have graduated fast. It isn't a negative either, but the fact that your GPA probably suffered, and that you also had less time to develop anything that actually could be looked at as a soft factor sort of make it so.

[sudoku]

Good advice/thoughts. I actually graduated over five years ago, so my youth has since given way to work experience and a lot of community service since graduation. I was pretty young at graduation, though...and pretty stupid.

[im_blue]

Your GPA is what it is, so graduating early will neither help nor hurt, especially since you're a few years out of college.