Penn Students Take Unconventional Paths to Graduation

Last May, then-College and Wharton senior Jacob Slusser officially walked down Franklin Field with the rest of his graduating class. But this fall, he is back at Penn, completing requirements to graduate at the end of this semester. 

On the other hand, College junior Annika Neklason plans to graduate a year early, having filled all her credits in just three years. 

While most students take the typical four years to finish their undergraduate degree, many students take a more unconventional path. 

According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 13 percent of Penn seniors — 1 in 8 students — do not obtain their bachelor's degrees in four years.

Although Penn’s six-year graduation rate of 96 percent and its four-year graduation rate of 87 percent are far above the national average of 59 percent, a large amount of Penn students are still left on campus after their classmates graduate.

Slusser’s fifth year at Penn has been a mix of the familiar and unfamiliar.

“It’s kind of been typical Penn — same place, different faces,” he said. “But this year, I’m living with people I didn’t know going into it, since I’m subletting. They’re great guys, but it’s just different from last semester when I was living with some of my best friends.”

Slusser, a member of the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences and Management, said that by the time he graduates Penn at the end of 2015, he will have completed 50 credits.

In his LSM graduating class, 4 out of 24 people are graduating late. He said that the high number of requirements in the program may contribute to the lower four-year graduation rate.

Nursing and Wharton senior Helen Pun expected that she would need five years to finish her bachelor’s degree. In 2011, Penn had switched the requirements of her dual-degree program, making it almost impossible to graduate in four years.

Pun said that Penn provided financial aid in order to allow her to stay for the extra year.

But not all students graduate late due to high credit requirements. College senior and Daily Pennsylvanian reporter Lowell Neumann Nickey decided to take a gap year his sophomore year for personal reasons.

“I was a swimmer my freshman year, and I didn’t really make it on the swim team so that left me a little bit bitter, and I needed to take time off to process that,” he said.

Hoping to find closure, he took a year off to coach a local suburban swim team, the Lower Marion Aquatic Club.

“It was a really good experience. It wasn’t anything illustrious — I didn’t travel the world — but I got to explore Philadelphia a little more locally and do something that I was very interested in,” Neumann Nickey said.

Despite their unconventional paths towards graduation, all three students are optimistic about their fifth year. 

“It’s nice to feel like I can add to this community rather than being like, I need to get a job, I need to OCR, I need to get out of here — it’s nice to take a step back and really feel like I’m a participant in this community,” Pun said.

Far rarer are the students who, through careful planning, finish their credit requirements in less than four years. 

“I feel like I’ve been in school forever, as most of us do, and I’m really excited to get out of that and stop doing things for grades,” Neklason said.

After mapping out the credits she would have to take to complete her English major during freshman year, Neklason realized that she could graduate in three years.

Nursing senior Jasmine Chen hopes to graduate a semester early in order to start working. If she wants to apply to a Nurse anesthesia program, she needs at least a year of work experience. 

Wharton senior Sarah Khoplans to finish on time, but with a semester's break in-between. She is taking this semester off to focus more on clubs and work at Smartypal, a Philadelphia-based tech startup.

Kho said that the opportunity to complete her credit requirements within three-and-a-half years provided her with an invaluable opportunity to challenge herself outside of the typical school setting.

The opportunities available outside of Penn can be enough to motivate some to graduate early. 

“I don’t have a super concrete path for the first time in my life,” Neklason said. “It’s kind of terrifying but also exciting that I’m leaving the well-traveled path.”

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.