Con: a shorter college experience.
If you're enjoying college, it can be hard to accept that while the rest of your friends are still eating lunch in the dining hall together, studying at the library together, and going to student-rate events on campus together, you're not going to be around.
You've less time to get to know your classmates and professors, less time to explore your college's clubs and organizations, less time to enjoy its traditions. If graduating early for you means you miss out on your last spring in college, it might also mean you aren't around for any annual spring events for seniors.
Maybe when you graduated high school, all of your relatives told you that college would be the best and most important time of your life. I don't know how you're supposed to tell if a few years during your late teens and twenties is the best of your life, but it is certainly a unique time. We're still kind of figuring out the whole growing-up-and-somehow-becoming-an-adult thing, challenging and expanding our minds, and having new experiences that teach us a lot about ourselves. Sometimes, it feels like an awful shame to lose part of that.
Pro: less debt and less stress.
This one's pretty simple. Finishing college just one semester before the typical four years means thousands of dollars you don't have to pay to your college, or pay back in student loans. In an economy that doesn't guarantee a well-paying job even to a college graduate, saving that money could be a big help.
You also get the satisfaction of not having to write any more scholarship essays, ten-page papers, or blue book exams. When all your friends are relying on espresso and sheer self-control to get them through yet another round of midterms, you'll be very deliberately not studying, and maybe even going to bed at a reasonable hour.
Con: the “real world.”
As I said, more and more college grads are finding it really hard to find jobs. If you're graduating early, you've got less time to prepare yourself to get flung into that rat race. For a lot of people, college feels like the last bubble of safety before having to face the stage of life we tend to call the “real world,” and it's a little scary to have to get those rebellious metaphorical ducks in a row earlier than you were expecting. The sooner you graduate, the sooner you have to figure out if you really want the job you've been telling everyone you want for the past couple years; the sooner you have to decide where in the whole wide world you want to live; the sooner you have to get really good at that whole interviewing thing so you can get a job there. One word: yikes.
Pro: the“real world.”
Once you leave your college bubble behind, it's time to embrace a new stage of your life. Maybe there is less time for you to enjoy college—but that also means there's less time to wait before you get to find your place in the world as a working adult in the "real world." It's scary, of course. But if you're scared, that means you care. And if you care so much, you have what it takes to grapple with that challenge head-on—and succeed.
All in all, the real world has to happen sometime, and I guess one semester sooner isn't such a bad thing.
