Graduating in four years unlikely plan

I think its an easy fallacy to fall into for a student to criticize any program that requires a class that they may not deem ‘necessary’ for their particular specialization. But don’t be lulled into thinking that colleges want well-rounded students “just for the sake of being able to say it.” The reality is that having a well-rounded education is important in the work-place because it emphasises the CONTEXT of where you are applying your specialization. I assume as a budding journalist, you want to be as objective and truthful as possible when writing for your future employer. How can tell if a future interview subject is just randomly spouting BS numbers if you’ve never taking a statistics course? Or how can a engineer or economist working for a globally operating company make the best decisions if they are completely ignorant of the culture in which their markets operate? So although the rewards may not be as overt as those specifically involved within your major, once you get out in the ‘real-world’ workplace you’ll find that employers do not want one-dimensional employees.

I think that this opinion is too pragmatic. Yes, we go to college to become more knowledgeable, be productive in society, and make money. But college is an experience. Furthermore, our years in college are a time to be exposed to different topics other than what we usually see in the newspapers and complement our knowledge. I don’t criticize the desire to learn in the desired topic of preference, but as students we have to have space for other things. And, this goes far beyond being a well rounded person, this is what college and the academia is about. Often I criticize journalists because they think they know everything and that attitude can be seen in the way they write an article.

Also, I think today we pay too much attention to double majors and additional titles to our undergrad education. Personally, I consider undergrad education to be the first of many steps in the academic and professional careers. In response to that, I would encourage other students to contemplate graduate education. Maybe you are not a wannabe PHD candidate, but a graduate degree really pays in the long run.

Finally, as an undergrad student, I think the general undergrad population is too hurried into the making money and getting rich idea. Don’t take me wrong, I dream every week about those good days in the future. But I think that undergrad students that want to be succesful without a graduate degree, in these days, have to be very creative in their approach. This doesn’t involve having many specializations and things like that but having an entrepreneur’s mind set. Why work for someone when you can set up your own business?

So, as a fellow undergrad students, I encourage others to dream and to have a vision of the future. Ambition is great, but vision is essential towards achieving excellence. Good luck!

GO STATE!!

Just remember the price tag in going another year when you could be working and making money. 20,000 dollars for school plus probably thirty thousand in income you won’t receive from your job. You can have have a lot of great experiences with 50,000 dollars outside of a collage campus.

Graduating in 4 years is perfectly realistic as long as you figure out your major in your first year. Of course you’re going to need extra time if you decide you need 2 degrees.

And like its been said, the additional requirements are necessary so you don’t have a one dimensional education. They’re not asking you to take ISB so you know how brine shrimp hatch, but rather learn ways to think about and approach a problem that you wouldn’t learn in a journalism class. I graduated mechanical engineering, and of course I didn’t enjoy taking all the IAH/ISS courses, but it helps give you some perspective outside of engineering.

I agree maybe some more flexibility would be nice in what courses you can take. You can’t tie it to the department, however. As I said before, graduating in 4 years isn’t an issue if you decide your major within the first year. This is because students can take the general credits that they know they’ll need, regardless of their major. Suppose a student thinks they’ll be a journalist, and takes only the departments mandatory courses. Then after a year decides they’d rather be a biologist, all of a sudden many of those courses they took may not count towards graduation if they don’t fit into the biology departments requirements.

Again

a frat boy can’t finish up in 4 years? well, at least you’ve convinced yourself that this isn’t indicitive of laziness or stupidity. nobody needs to feel bad in today’s society!

Sounds like a lazy frat boy to me. I came in with only 24 AP cred, didn’t test out of EC 201/202, and I’m going to graduate with my double major in 3 years without summer classes, in majors that are both much tougher than “journalism”.

Fun Fact: You can actually take 18 credits in a semester. You don’t have to take the minimum 12 credits. I’m also funding my own education (my parents don’t love me, it seems).

double majors are a waste. look i have two bachelors, too bad that gets trumped by one masters/p.h.d,or medical/law degree

Yeah… I came in with 6 credits from a CC that I took in senior year of high school (No AP classes offered at my high school), and I managed to not only double major in journalism and geography (yes, cupcake majors I know) in 3 1/2 years. I took between 15/18 credits a semester, including two 4-credit internships in summer and two classes last summer, participated in several time-consuming campus activities, and yet managed to drink a LOT of beer, smoke a LOT of pot, and do a LOT of dumb things before my graduation in December. Many of my friends are graduating in 4 years, and of the people who are going to take 4 1/2 or 5 years to graduate, almost every one of them went to a community college before coming to MSU.

Zack, keep living up the college life, and keep in mind that nobody cares if you’re in school longer than four years. Don’t understand how it’s possible with you since you came in with 30 credits, but regardless, live it up. The real world isn’t anything special.

Sixth year is the most fun.

Double Majors hits it on the head. If you only take 12-13 credits a semester it’s going to take longer. (Seems a lot of people do that for some reason.) However if you man up and take 15-18 all the time, you should be able to do it 4. I got a double degree in 2 diametrically opposed colleges (Engineering and Liberal Arts) and was still able to do it 5 years. I could have done it in 4 and a half but when your classes are only offered in one semester (with a lot of pre-reqs also offered in only 1 semester), makes more difficult. Think I wound up with 171 credits by the time I was done.

I’m pretty sure a lot of people take only 12-13 credits/semester because they want to concentrate on those classes and maintain a decent GPA. Of course you can still get decent grades taking 18 cr. a term but once you start trying to fit a job and some sort of social life into the mix its gets progressively harder to maintain your sanity.

The University doesn’t give a rat’s ass if you’re well rounded and knowledgeable, none of the bandits in a public education system ever do. More requirements means you pay for more credit hours, meaning more redundant two-bit poetry critics can be staffed as tenured professors.

Taking a couple of extra courses to round you out, that’s a joke, the knowledge you gain in those fields from a handful of courses is paltry at best. Never make the mistake of looking at any institution as a friend, least of all a semi-publicly funded university. This institution is just another bunch of people with nice cars, houses with mortgages, private music lessons for their arrogant little children, etc. Their goal is to maximize profits and pay for their nice stuff, not to increase society’s overall intelligence.

Indoc…why so cynical? Do you really think that a land-grant university like MSU was created way-back-when to ‘maximize profits and pay for nice stuff?’ Most of the staff that I’ve met do actually seem to care about their students and don’t use them as a means to an end. As least with the science and technology academics, they seem to have motives other than making money; for example why else would someone with a PhD in engineering take a pay-cut to be a professor when they could easily make more in the private sector? And I seriously doubt your libertarian logic that because an institution is publicly funded that it is more concerned with revenue generation. Have you ever attended a private college? They seem more cocnerned with tuition since it generally occupies a larger percentage of their income

Zak, I understand your comments and concerns. Graduating in ’82, in the midst of the worst recession prior to now, nobody was interviewing on campus. Suprise? With a Business Admin and Economics degree I stayed for summer terms and worked year round and made it in four years. But….things have changed. The career environment has changed and there are things that are missing in the “graduation/career” tract. The first is Passion! Stick to your ideals, sacrifice and don’t settle. Our generaton, in the most part, forgot the reasons we attended MSU and got caught in the job/career tract, forgetting what was important to us. Don’t make the same mistake. Take 4 1/2 or 5, but don’t settle!

I’m double majoring, in 2 related science fields, and then going on to get a PhD. Why the second degree now then? because MSU doesn’t offer a major that has all of the courses that I want to take. The “electives” I would have taken anyway only left me about 15 credits short of a second degree, so I re-arranged my schedule, fit in the extra credits, and will graduate in 4 years (came in with 15 AP credits, only took 1 summer class, work 10-15 hrs a week, mentor an elementary school student, and am involved in a student group about 10 hours a week) with 2 degrees. And let me tell you, when I was interviewing for grad school…they were very impressed that I was completing 2 tough majors. Yes, just taking the classes would have been impressive, but having both majors made it quick and easy for them to see that I was serious about my education, and serious about getting a “well rounded” (within my field) education. I’m sure the fact that I took 2 graduate classes helped too, and having the background I did in undergrad classes allowed me to complete those courses successfully

Come May 9th I will have completed my undergraduate BS in Environmental Studies and Applications, with two minors, Env. Economics and Policy and Env. Science. I also completed the Master certification for Watershed Management (Graduate Classes) . All of this in four years. I didn’t decide on my major until my sophomore year! Sometimes you just need to buckle down and take on more classes and party less.

But Wilson, we’re ENTITLED to only have to go to school four years and not have to work very hard. I thought college was for partying???

While I understand your perspective, as an alumna that has been working in the DC job market for several years now and is also finishing a graduate degree, I can tell you that a well-rounded curriculum is more important to most employers and graduate schools than a double major. Especially for international relations majors, employers and graduate schools want to know that you have quantitative skills. Yes, I have actually been asked in a job interview if I have taken calculus. Not because I would need to actually do calculus on the job, but because it proves that I can succeed at tasks that liberal arts majors typically shy away from. Double majors, on the other hand, are not as useful as college students think they are. They seem to do little to nothing to boost your application to most jobs and graduate programs.

Your best bet for a job after attending that academic toilet called “MSU” is Burger King fool.