To Graduate Early or Not?

[Ethersworn]

Greetings,

I am a 2nd semester sophomore (or junior, depending) majoring in Classics (Latin focus) and minoring in Linguistics at the South Carolina Honors College at USouthCarolina (ranked 34th in the country for Linguistics). (http://www.stat.tamu.edu/~jnewton/nrc_rankings/nrc41.html#area7)

I have a 4.0 and have finished the classes I didn't have desire to study for (lab sciences, math, &c.) leaving me with only languages and linguistics courses to take.

For personal reasons, I have a strong desire to graduate a year early as it would open up a fantastic possibility in my personal life but I do not want to hurt my future career. By the end of spring semester next year, I will have taken 3 years of Latin and the equivalent of 2 years of Greek, 2 years of German, at least 1 year of Old English and 1 year of Old Norse. I want to eventually get a Phd in Historical Linguistics from somewhere nice (Cornell, UPenn, Harvard, Minnesota, &c.), regardless of whether I get a prefatory Masters degree. Theoretically, if I stayed for a full 4 years I would graduate with a Classics major and Linguistics and German double minor, while 3 years would leave me with a German cognate instead . I will have written a senior thesis (ideally doing some comparative linguistics with my familiar languages) and possibly have presented at a conference by this point next year.

My ultimate question is, if I go ahead and graduate early, will I be a highly competitive candidate for these sorts of MA programs or would I be shooting myself in the foot by pushing forward for person reasons?

[radiowires]

Hi Ethersworn! I'm going to be a three-year graduate, but I wanted to wait until I had heard some results back from my grad school applications before I replied to this. Like you, my reasons to graduate ahead of time were a mix of personal and done-with-my-coursework reasons, and I ultimately decided that it was worth leaving even if that meant sacrificing a senior thesis and some possible presentations.

As for applying to schools... long story short: don't worry about it too much. I'm quite happy with the options I have for next year. It's your call, though, and if you really do feel that leaving early would hurt your chances, stay the extra year. Experience never hurts, but if you can demonstrate that you're driven, focused, and motivated, I think that's just as important.

Edited February 19, 2012 by radiowires