The dreaded fifth year: A student’s guide to graduating on time

As many of the upperclassmen and faculty know, Hunter undergrads regularly take more than 4 years to complete a Bachelor’s degree.

Ever since my first year here in 2013, I’ve come across mobs of young men and women destined for fifth, sixth, and even seventh years at our beloved university – super seniors are the rule, not the exception.

One student I spoke to even claimed that the five year track to graduation “has become the fear of all [undergraduate] students that attend Hunter.”

The College Scorecard recently released by the Department of Education put Hunter’s graduation rate (the percentage of students graduating within six years) at 48 percent, slightly above the national average.

Nationwide, 19 per cent of full-time students at public colleges earn a bachelor’s degree after four years, which rises to 36 per cent at more selective institutions. But one figure puts our four-year graduation rate at just 22 per cent.

Why is taking extra time such a massive issue here?

From my own experience, as someone who probably will graduate a semester or two late, and from speaking to several peers ranging from freshmen to alumni, I’ve got a few ideas.

One of the most mentioned causes for a late graduation was the daunting General Education Requirement Hunter places over our heads, taking up around a third of our required credits.

“Wow, there’s no way I can do all these classes in 4 years,” said one freshman I spoke to.

However, many other schools have very similar requirements and manage to avoid late graduates.

The underlying problem here seems to be twofold: Students do not plan their classes properly in order to finish the Hunter core, and many end up with their plans in shambles due to Hunter’s chaotic enrollment period, cynically dubbed “the Hunter Games”.

Most freshmen and sophomores do not use their advisors well enough. It is very possible to finish the Hunter core on time by taking classes that kill multiple requirements, and avoiding taking classes you think might be for a requirement.

The advisors should help to clear up both of these issues, putting you in a better standing to graduate in the same time span as one of those swanky private school kids. Go you!

No matter how much you plan your schedule, you will still have to face the dreaded Hunter Games enrollment.

Part of adulthood is accepting that there are some things we must inevitably face: for Caitlyn Jenner, it’s internet transphobia. Kobe Bryant has teamwork. And we have enrollment time.

Anyone without priority registration, like athletes and scholars, suffers from limited classes due to them filling up moments after registration begins. Many are forced to choose horrendous schedules with 7 hour long gaps, or to try and overtally.

Half of the STEM majors I know end up without some required class, and either take it in the summer or winter sessions, or graduate late. Chem labs are a prime example: freshmen taking Chem 102 will have limited seating in the lab class for the next semester. Think a few hundred lab seats to almost 1000 lecture seats.

My only advice in this situation is to make a friend who has priority, and is willing to save a class for you, or join a sport.

Two other options are to work hard enough to become Thomas Hunter Honors scholars, gaining priority registration for your last two years, or waiting till the day when tuition money is due, and scooping up classes dropped from people who failed to pay on time.

If you successfully enrolled, and have everything progressing perfectly, you can still graduate late due to changing majors. A majority of people listed this as a big reason for late graduation. Changing majors can put you back depending on when the change was made.

Many majors at Hunter won’t allow for too many major classes to be taken at once, forcing students to pace themselves through the curriculum. In this case, not much can be done. Remember that graduation time should not affect your choices for studies. Being stuck for an extra year in college is worse than being stuck in a field you find boring.

So regardless of whether your reasons for graduating late are major or minor, you can stand on our motionless escalators knowing that at the very least you’re not the only one.