Ericson also says he was able to stay close to several good friends in the Class of 2002 who remained in the Boston area. He will even get to walk in Commencement today alongside his original Winthrop House roommate, who also took time off.

The Speed Demons

On the opposite end of the spectrum are students like Gretchen R. Passe ’03, who have sped through their college career in three years.

Passe says she has always expected to graduate today. One of the deciding factors in her decision to come to Harvard was the opportunity to graduate early through advanced standing.

While most undergraduates eligible for advanced standing either never take advantage of it or use it to earn both a bachelors and masters degree in four years, between 30 and 50 students typically will use it to shave off a year of college.

The decision to graduate in three years was less straightforward for others.

For Teri T. Kleinberg ’03, it was a matter of never taking time off. Kleinberg had planned to use advanced standing to take a leave before graduating with the Class of 2004. But when this past semester began and she had yet to take a sabbatical from Cambridge, Kleinberg says she decided she might as well graduate a year early.

Kleinberg says she is leaving Harvard on a high note, having satisfied her goals and having enjoyed her college career. In contrast, she notes that many of the seniors who have taken the traditional four-year route wind up jaded.

“I’ve not been counting down the days to graduation for the entire year like a lot of seniors,” she says.

Kleinberg also notes that having firm post-graduation plans gave her the luxury of graduating early. Kleinberg will travel around the world on a Finley Traveling Fellowship to write a cookbook. She plans to enter a masters program at Oxford the following year.

Passe says she views the lure of graduating in three years more as a matter of dollars and cents—an opportunity to save the cost of a fourth year of tuition.

“Forty-thousand dollars is a lot of money,” Passe says. “Since there are a finite amount of resources in the world, I thought it would be hard to justify [a fourth year]. Harvard is a wonderful education, but I don’t think I could have personally benefited from the resources of a fourth year.”

And while Passe says she would have passed up her fourth year regardless of her options for next year, she will attend Harvard Law School next year. She will even remain a resident of Lowell House in exchange for helping to run formal House events.

Despite their official inclusion in the Class of 2003, those graduating early express some awkwardness about their situation, similar to that articulated by Ericson and Skey.

“In some ways, I feel like an imposter senior,” Kleinberg says.