Accelerate: How To Finish A Degree In The Shortest Possible Time Frame

We’ve all seen them, the spam emails that promise a “degree” with no courses, no books, no tests. And we’ve all heard stories about the diploma mills that charge a small fee to review your work and life experience, after which they grant you a degree.

This article is not about those kinds of degrees.

This article explores ways that you can legitmately accelerate your progress toward a degree, using accepted methods and working on fully accredited credentials.

How Much Can You Accelerate?
The first thing you need to understand is that just because a college sets an expected time frame for a degree does not mean you have to be bound by their time frame. Just because a school claims a Bachelors degree is a “four year degree” does not mean you have to take four years.

You can accelerate. We have reports of some students who have accumulated 40 college credits in only 2 months. Thats one third of a 120 credit Bachelors degree in two months.

Now realistically, very few people have the kind of time to spend on-task to complete 40 credit hours in 2 months. However, it can be done and some people are doing it.

It is much more realistic to think in terms of accelerating by semesters, and even years. For example, the Bachelors is considered a “4 year degree” because it has traditionally been spread over 2 semesters per year for 4 years.

However, just adding summer courses to that standard schedule makes it possible to accelerate by a year, without even taking overloads or finding alternative methods for amassing credit. Just a simple schedule shift (adding summer courses) reduces the time investment by a year.

There are many other legitimate methods for reducing the time frame for completing a degree.

Requirements for Accelerating
To earn an accelerated degree, you have to be a bit unconventional. You need to be a bit of a free thinker. If following the crowd is your style, it will probably take you four years (at least) to complete a four year degree.

In addition, in order to earn an accelerated degree, you have to be able to learn fast. That may seem like a “no-brainer,” but often learning and earning a degree are two different things. For an accelerated degree, it will be necessary to learn fast.

Finally, to earn an accelerated degree, you will need some tools. You will need some reference materials and some preparation guides. They are the required assets for accelerating your degree.

Note: The methods discussed below are best applied to pursuing a Bachelors degree. There are some ways to accelerate graduate school (see below), but it is not as readily done.

Methods for Accelerating
Earning an accelerated degree is as much about your attitude as anything. To accelerate, you must develop the attitude of an intrepid explorer, seeking always to find new and better ways to amass credit toward your degree.

Choose Your School Carefully
The first rule for completing an accelerated degree is to be careful about the school you choose. Your school’s attitude and policies will either help or hinder your time to completing your degree.

As you evaluate schools and visit with their representatives, be very upfront about your plan to accelerate. If they seem at all inflexible or reluctant to commit to your plan, find another school.

You will need to focus on your school’s schedule, load limits, transfer requirements, credit waiver and exam policies, and any cooperative or dual enrollment agreements they may have in place.

Maximize Transfers
Transfer credit is an awesome asset for degree acceleration. If you have attended college in the past, your transfer credit should still be viable. Even if your college experience is over 10 years old, try to get your school to accept your transfer credit.

In some cases, your transfer credit may be in a field unrelated to your current interest or degree program. In that case, try to get your school to accept the transfer hours as elective credit.

The general principle is to avoid taking anything thta you have already taken from another college, even if it was a while ago. After all, English I hasn’t changed recently, right?

Work and Life Experience Portfolio
If your school offers credit for work and life experience, do it. Credit for work and life experience is a very legitimate way to accumulate hours toward your degree and is usually worth the time and effort involved.

Be sure to follow your school’s procedures very closely when completing your work and life experience exercise. Most schools will require a portfolio with documentation, with specific processes and requirements unique to them.

CLEP Testing
The College Level Examination Program (CLEP) tests are also great ways to earn credit. The CLEP exams assess your knowledge in areas related to college study.

You take tests to determine if your knowledge is the equivalent to what you would accomplish in a college course. If it is, you get credit.

Most schools are very willing to accept CLEP results for credit. Like every strategy, though, be sure to check with your school before you take a CLEP test.

Also, you can now buy prep guides for the CLEP tests. Especially if it has been a while since you have been to college, the prep guides are great investments.

Correspondence and Independent/Directed Study
Many schools offer two approaches to taking their courses: defined terms and independent study (which some may call “correspondence” study or “directed” study.)

With defined terms, the courses begin and end on specific dates. These may be semesters, short terms, summer sessions, or some other arrangement. The key is that the school determines when the course begins and ends and, thus, how long it takes to complete it.

With independent study, you are in charge of the pace of the course. The school normally sets a limit on the length of the course, but leaves you in charge of when the actual work gets done.

So, for example, your school may offer an independent study version of your course, with the requirement that it be finished within 90 days. That does not mean you have to wait 90 days to turn in the materials. You can finish early, and get started on another course.

If your chosen school is inflexible about independent study, or doesn’t offer it for courses you need, you can also take the courses from other schools. Many of the biggest schools in the US, the land grant state universities, offer independent and correspondence courses. And many of those courses are now supported by Web sites, making them de facto online courses.

You can take your courses from these large schools, then transfer the credit back to your school. Be sure to check into your school’s transfer requirements and flexibility before you start trying this. Some schools are distinctly more flexible than others.

Accelerating Graduate Study
Most of these strategies are designed for use at the Bachelors level. Need to accelerate a Masters degree? Your options are more limited, but it can be done.

Accelerating at the graduate level is all about networking and academic politics. The better you are at working the system, the more likely that you can accelerate.

Of the options outlined above, directed study courses are probably the best way to move more quickly through a graduate degree program. They offer you the opportunity to work directly with a faculty member, design the course and its requirements, and move as quickly as possible to get it finished.

In graduate schools, directed study courses are usually within the faculty’s purview. In other words, whether or not you are able to take one will tend to depend upon whether or not you can get a faculty member to support you.

Generally, you need a faculty member’s permission to take the directed study course, and you need for her or him to agree to facilitate it for you. The good news is, once you have the faculty member’s support, almost no one else in a graduate school will interfere.

To get the faculty member’s support, you must have a relationship. This does not mean you should schmooze with faculty members. It does mean that you should establish yourself as a bright, diligent competent student who does great work, lives up to their word, and handles challenge well.

In other words, to accelerate in a graduate program, you have to be able and willing to make a faculty member look good. Your performance will reflect directly on them. The better you perform, the better they look. The better they look, the more willing they are to help you.

This is a very individualized issue, of course, and will shift from school to school and department to department. But follow these guidelines and you will give yourself the best chance to earn an accelerated graduate degree.


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