About eight percent of our students graduate in fewer than eight semesters at Cornell – usually by completing courses during the summer or bringing in lots of advanced placement credit. Accelerants show that they have compressed the first two years and completed a curriculum with sufficient upper-level Cornell work by satisfying certain conditions outlined in Courses of Study. We are utterly ruthless in adhering to these conditions for an exception to the residence requirement. Parents sometimes have difficulty understanding why. We try to explain, but we are invariably insistent even if explanations fail.
Many students and parents may think that early graduation is a self-evident good. We do not agree with that assessment. There is so much more to do here than any one person can do that most students, especially truly serious ones, will want to spend the full four years and take advantage of research and tutorial opportunities. Besides, what is the hurry to graduate? Students will never again have the opportunity to study such a wide range of subjects with leading scholars. Those proceeding to professional schools, in particular, look back at their undergraduate careers as the last time they were able to take courses in music, Near Eastern studies, or political economy. In addition, with no mandatory retirement age and too many of us aging parents depending on younger labor to support social security and other retirement plans, this college generation is going to have to work until it is almost decrepit. So don’t pressure your daughters and sons to hurry up and leave – despite the immediate dollar savings.
Once offers of admission to colleges are secured, the senior year of high school becomes an arena where many students, even good ones, tend to do less than they are able. College is not that way. Here, the final semesters are the real intellectual pay-off for coming to expensive, demanding, exciting Cornell.