It seems every time a UT commission or committee recommends students graduate in four years, an outcry ensues. "I won't have a social life if I take more than 12 hours!" or "I need to work to pay for tuition, and I can't do that while enrolled in 15 hours!" are the whiney responses.
Give it up. Plenty of students take 15 or 17 or 19 hours and still find time to get wasted on Sixth Street, and some do that while working (though I don't advise working while shnockered up). Below are some tips on how to get out of here faster:
1) Take more classes. The College of Liberal Arts and Natural Sciences now have flat-rate tuition, where students taking 12 or more hours pay for 14 hours. Many students complain that flat rate tuition is completely unfair to students who take 12 hours. Well sure it is! Why are you only taking 12 hours? Work the system to your advantage.
In the College of Liberal Arts, you can take up to 20 hours each semester as long as you received at least 36 grade points in the prior semester. Take 17 hours every semester (and 18 in one), and you'll be able to graduate in 3.5 years. With 20 hours per semester, you'll be out in three years.
2) Take advantage of credit-by-examination, and you can graduate even sooner. The decrepit Measurement and Evaluation Center (MEC) building near the SSB holds the key to lots of cheap credit hours and a no-risk GPA boost. The MEC offers nearly 40 tests for credit, from Polish to Electrical Engineering. Study French on your own, and you can get up to 16 hours of credit.
The SAT II in Physics is another great one; you can get eight hours of credit from this high school-level test - enough to nearly meet the science requirement in many colleges - without stepping foot in a physics classroom.
Many of the tests are easy, too.
A former UT adviser told me of a student accidentally signing up for the sociology CLEP exam instead of the economics CLEP. While the questions seemed unfamiliar, he still got an A.
Even if you get a C on the exam, there's no need to worry - the MEC gives you the choice of taking credit, or both the credit and grade. Get an A, and take the grade, otherwise don't. And just taking credit doesn't count against the number of courses you're allowed to take pass/fail.
3) Worried about balancing studying for credit-by-exam test with your 17-hour course load? Take time management, study skill and speed reading classes. The UT Learning Center on the second floor of Jester offers these classes - and many more - for free. They also have helpful handouts like, "Anatomy of an All-Nighter."
4) If the all-nighters are getting to you, consider quitting your job. It's entirely possible to take 17 hours and work, but if you're not making the grade, substitute some loans for your income.
Even if you didn't qualify for financial aid, there are loads of private loans out there that will cover you up to UT's estimated cost of attendance, and most have interest rates hovering around four percent. And, in the long run, you'll be saving money. Every semester sooner you graduate is a tuition saving of $3,294 (for an in-state liberal arts student) or $7,151 (for an out-of-state natural sciences student).
The bigger savings, of course, is the opportunity cost. The average earnings of UT graduates from the classes of 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995 and 2000 was more than $89,000 in 2001, according to a study by UT economics professor Daniel Hamermesh.
There may also be a financial benefit to two fewer years of keg stands; the average liver transplant costs a bit more than $300,000.
Brown is a graduate student in professional accounting.
Be the first to comment on this article!