A plan is wonderful. Even though I’m not a very good planner, but I can still get see a huge difference when I form a plan and stick to it. But of course, there is always something that comes in at the last second and entirely screws up the plan. For me, the kink in the ‘graduate early’ plan has been the poor advice and service of academic and transfer advisers. (They’re usually the same person, but I’ve been dealing with advisers who dealt primarily with transfer evaluations, thus the delineation.)
Immediately upon deciding that I was going to attempt finishing college in two years, I tried to lay out the specific things I needed to do and the order in which I would have to do them. For example, I tried to offset heavy (in terms of credit or difficulty) semesters with less CLEP credits, and also tried to map my class schedule at both schools to knock out prerequisite credits first. So I took about a week and talked to the advisement at community college(CC from now on) I am currently attending as well as the advisement at the four-year institution (4YI from now on) of choice. When talking to each adviser, I let them know that I would be transferring the credit and wanted to minimize wasted courses. In other words, I didn’t need a dance or fencing class, and I didn’t want to take any courses twice. Upon the request of the 4YI, I sent lists of the courses I would be taking for the following three semesters so that they could do an “unofficial transcript evaluation” that would ensure the credits would map correctly. Everything sounded good at the time; although I was a little worried because even after my request to eliminate the fluff classes, my CC adviser suggested a Physical Education class that was not necessary for my degree.
Fast-forward a couple months to the time my high school AP score reaches the 4YI’s transfer evaluation team. Even though I had emailed back and forth directly regarding the credits for this exam and what they would transfer as, the academic adviser (AA from now on) informed me that the credits would not transfer because I had already taken a “similar” class. Of course I wasn’t excited so I forwarded my previous correspondence with the AA to the AA and requested a reevaluation. After reevaluating the transcript, I was awarded 3 out of the 6 credits that were previously granted. Everyone is entitled to mistakes and if this were the only incident, I wouldn’t complain. But there is more… In preparation for the fall semester I sent in an updated version of my transcript as well as a test score to my 4YI. The reply I got was that credit was not given for the test I had taken. I responded with the link on the university website listing the specific credit given for the test. Meanwhile, my transcript had been evaluated and one of the courses that I had been told would transfer as a prerequisite for my major was instead transferred for the class that I just took the exam for! So now I’ve taken an extra exam for no credit and lopped on 3 elective credits that are completely useless to me.
What may be the most viable solution is to attempt to test out of the major prereq class and hope for the best. Although the courses are similar in content, a lot of the terminology is different and the fact that I will be trading an A for a completion grade is depressing. Because of the accelerated timeline I’m dealing with I don’t see many options here. By the time I have this reevaluated and sorted out I could probably have studied for and taken the exam. I wish I had more time to tell some more “Adviser” tales, but I’ve run out. If you get nothing else out of this get this: 1) Don’t leave your college planning in the hands of your adviser and 2) Plans can get screwed up in a hurry.
