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AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING THE GW COMMUNITY SINCE 1904

The GW Hatchet

Serving the GW Community since 1904

The GW Hatchet

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Officials name senior vice president, chief of staff
By Fiona Riley, Assistant News Editor • March 26, 2024

Jacob Garber: The drawbacks of graduating early

Media Credit: Hatchet File Photo
Jacob Garber

I am going into finals week as a sophomore, but I will finish as a senior.

I’ll wrap up my bachelor’s degree in three years instead of four. The potential financial benefits of this decision are too great to pass up: I will avoid debt by forgoing a year of tuition and will hopefully enter graduate school a year early. With this opportunity, staying for a full four years seems overindulgent.

However, even though I will save a year of college expenses, I can’t help but think my decision to graduate early has big disadvantages. Now, as I stare down my final year as an undergraduate, I fear my decision will put my application behind the curve in the competitive game of graduate school admissions.

Early graduation is often heralded as a way to cheat a broken system, but doing so may not always be the best decision in the long run.

I aspire to enter graduate school in the humanities and eventually pursue a Ph.D. But my decision to graduate early may harm my graduate school application. Building a competitive application requires an extensive list of courses, research and conference presentations, most of which I will have to compress into this final college summer.

Most students, on the other hand, have four years ā€“ not three ā€“ to build their resumes.

In expediting my GW career, I had to start considering postgraduate life before most students typically declare their majors. I didn’t have a year in the interim to ask questions about what jobs I might be interested in, or to discover which internships would equip me with the applicable skills.

In a lot of ways I’m playing catch-up, scrambling to get all of my academic affairs in order before I begin my pseudo-senior year. I will spend the summer studying for the GREs, doing research at literary archives for my senior thesis and writing my personal statements for graduate school applications.

And in my shortened time at GW, I will graduate without exploring many courses outside my major, joining organizations or taking advantage of opportunities that the University and the District have to offer. And next year, while many of my friends are studying abroad in Morocco or France, I will have my 18-credit-hour load on the Foggy Bottom Campus ā€“ the standard until my last day at GW.

In the end, I’m doing it to save money. In trying economic times, with GW students’ average debt toll reaching $32,714, according to the Project on Student Debt, I’m sure others are considering similar options.

But even though I’m saving, I must also question what I’m losing.

Jacob Garber, a sophomore majoring in English and creative writing, is a Hatchet columnist.

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