My daughter recently started college with 60 AP credits. However, looking at the requirements of her major and honors program and when classes are offered, it looks like it will be a struggle for her to complete her bachelor's degree in four years.
For starters, some courses are only offered one semester a year, and the timing often conflicts with other required courses, so she must choose one required course and wait a year to take the conflicting course (which might conflict with something else when the time comes).
Also, some required courses have extensive prerequisites that do not count toward the major. For example, one course alone has five prerequisites that will not count toward the major or core requirements. Her major requires 21 courses on top of an extensive core (most of which she has fulfilled with AP), but that is deceiving because it is much more with prerequisites.
The honors requirements add an additional 6 to 13 courses that she must complete to be able to graduate with Latin honors (which she needs because she plans to attend graduate school in a funded program). For some majors, their department offers a lot of honors courses within the major that can kill two birds with one stone. For students who do not have AP credit, they can also take honors courses for basic core classes. But for my daughter's major, and with her AP credits, there are no honors courses to take that contribute to her major. She is required to take a minimum of 6 honors courses, and either another 7 honors courses or 7 "experiences" such as conducting research, interning, volunteering, etc. Realistically she'll probably wind up somewhere in the middle with about 9 honors courses and 4 experiences.
She had thought that with 60 AP credits she would be able to easily take on a minor or two and study abroad at least a semester, but it is looking like it will be a struggle just to complete the major and the honors requirements in four years. I am starting to understand why so many students do not graduate on time. I think it would be impossible if she didn't have the AP credits. I've actually been exploring other possible majors for her with fewer course requirements, but she is limited in her choices because some scholarships she has are tied to her major and department.
Anyone have similar issues?
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