For my kids, one finished, one finishing, and one about to start-
And each ended up with stuff they didn’t need / extra beyond requirements from changes, planning mistakes, etc.
And one that just started bringing up grad school.

But not too bad.

Both fairly focused STEM.

How right on the nose did you or your kids do with regards to not adding stuff, changing majors, doing a double major, doing a minor, changing the minor, etc.?

I was STEM but with the classic liberal arts and sciences format.

I ended up with nine semesters /32  SH of Bio.  I could have trimmed one.
Seven semesters / 27 SH of Chem.  I could have trimmed one there also.
Three semesters of Calc and another of Stats for 12 SH.  I could have trimmed a semester of Calc.
Seven semesters / 22 SH of Anatomy, Physiology, Human Development- Looking back, I almost  think I could have met my requirements without any of it.
Three semesters, 9 SH of Psyc.  I could have trimmed one semester, and used the Bio Psyc for one of the above Bio semesters.
The two semesters / 8 SH of Physics were the bare minimum I needed.
The 11 semesters of English, Lit, History, Art, Classics, Religion, Philosophy, and foreign language for 35 SH I could have trimmed two of with a B.S. instead of B.A.

I went over the 120 SH by quite a bit.
I was fresh out of four years in the Army, went into the reserve duty plus GI Bill,
Most of my relatives did not have HS diplomas and none had college experience.

This was pre cell phones, pre free long distance calls, pre internet, and I had a dog eared, written in, student handbook going through everything by hand and trying to pencil it out.  With a decision to continue my education after undergrad whether as a civilian/reservist or back on active duty or federal government service  with them paying for it. Then figuring it all out again with a major change.  And adding one.


I thought it would be way easier keeping track of requirements for the kids now, looking stuff up, verifying, etc. but it’s not.

I have 155 hours of coursework completed for my BS

Thank you for chiming in and making me feel better!

LoL ur welcome

If you ever want to hear my life story it’s full of me just flat out failing over and over

I don't remember exactly but in the neighborhood of 25 or 30 extra credit hours.

I would consider most of the classes I took that were not required for my degree well worth the time and money though.

Engineering degrees took 4 years of 18 hours per if you wanted to get through in four years.

Everyone else in the university received a bachelors degree with 4 years of 15 hours.

ETA:  144 hours for College of Engineering BS Degrees
        120 hours for Bachelors in any other college.

Yes.

I am most used to the semester hour system.
Based on 15 per semester/ 30 hrs per year for 120hr Bachelor degrees.

With the classic 1:1 hour for lecture semester hours.
But around 3 hours in lab for each 1 lab SH.

Which could kill you in a semester with 18SH,
Two 3SH lecture courses,  there’s 6 hours in a room.

And three 4SH courses that each had a lab SH.
There’s another 9 hours in a room,
Plus about 10 hours in labs,

About 25 hours physically somewhere,
Figure 25 hours of reading for that,
25 hours of assignments,
Those are 75hr weeks if no quizzes, tests, papers that week to add to it.

I put 176 into my BS, Mechanical Engineering - Pre Med

Are you a Engineer Doctor?

165 or so hours and only an associates, a paramedic license, and a handful of certs to show for it at the moment. Changed majors three times. Starting a new position at my plant and will be eligible for tuition reimbursement so I plan on taking full advantage of it.

Engineering isn't all that uncommon for pre-med. Especially the engineering degrees that are heavy on biology. Engineers are methodical thinkers that are usually good problem solvers. So engineering school is a good lead-up to problem-solving the human body.

Also a STEM guy. About 2 extra years worth of coursework. Changed majors and got screwed on my transfer credits for my new major.

On the bright side, I have three degrees (which got me a great job) and I've completed a doctoral thesis. I have no intention of getting my Ph.D., I just took doctoral level classes for my undergrad electives and wrote a thesis just to prove to myself I could get the doctor title if I wanted it.

I just counted them all up. I changed majors three or four times. Some of my credit doesn't count towards my degree (my university doesn't give a shit that I took a 6-hour class to become an EMT, for example).

But all in all, I have 172 semester hours, including the classes that I just completed last week. That earned me my first degree. My second will be done in December, after I take 9 more hours.

So, 181 hours for a BA in Economics and a BS in Geography/GIS.

I believe Engineering makes up about 10% of medical students.  About another 15% chemistry, physics, etc.
Bio close to %40.

Supposedly about 85% of “pre med” undergrads never matriculate.  I think about 8 million freshman start college each year.  (About 40% will graduate and complete an undergrad degree)

I believe about 140K start out as “pre med”,
70K drop the concept before completion, often during the year of organic.   Those that get past the year of Calc, physics with Calc, organic, or  hope to something waived,  have non objective performance based selection criteria, amount to about 70K first time takers plus another 30K  people retaking to try to get a higher score,  Which amounts to about 50K scoring 50th percentile or below.  And most successful applicants picked up around the 80th percentile and above.

About 35,000 new applicants each year, plus 20K that failed to get in the previous year, will end up with 20K getting into MD school, and another 6K into DO school instead, and some more getting into an off shore “foreign” school.

As they trend down from select, to good, to average, to below average MD schools, to DO schools, to off shore schools, you will see lower MCAT scores, lower GPAs, stronger chance of some requirements being waived or substituted, etc.

It’s not an entirely fair process.  A white male California resident may not get into MD school there, so does DO school there.  While non objective performance criteria applicants with weaker scores did.  And he would have been in MD school no problem if he was a West Virginia or Texas resident.  Or a killer grade and MCAT West Pointer that was an 11A and 18A for six years gets told by the three MD schools in his state his prerequisites are over five years old and to retake them, but the DO school takes him. Or a guys that could have gotten into the greatest MD school ever goes to a lower tier DO school where his family and wife’s family is and all other schools are far away.

But in general, the major does not matter as long as the pre requisites are knocked out.  If someone wants to be an Engineering major with a little extra Bio, or a Religion major with way more bio, chem, Calc, physics, etc. than they needed, it’s all good.

But at the end of the day, each year beings about  140K to start, 70K to complete much of the prerequisites and take the MCATs, 50K to apply, and 20K to get into a US MD school in a rolling cycle plus about 6K into DO school.

US MD graduates will successfully match for post graduate medical training about 95% of the time.  With those that do not being represented in an overwhelming majority of those not selected for medical school by strictly objective performance criteria.

DO graduates will successfully match about 90% of the time.

Offshore graduates about a 50% match.

With the lower match rate groups disproportionately marching to PGY1 only positions vs residency slots in proportion to their overall match rates.


Anyways,
I got sidetracked with details before getting to my point,
If you have kids considering medical school, it seems to make a lot of sense to steer them to a major with decent job prospects in case they change their mind or don’t get in.
The job prospects for a B.S.C.E. Or Comp. Sci. With a minor in Biology that decides not to go to medical school, seem much better than for a Bio or History degree major that does not get in.

I had more wasted courses than you can count. Two years core, bunch of electives that were required, and maybe a year total for my major. Then 3 Masters, and a six year. Should have gone straight through for my Doctorate. Five colleges got the benefit of my money and time. This was before on line stuff you could take at home.

Computer Science. Needed 180 credits and I graduated with 180.5. I did plan carefully, but was lucky, too.

My undergrad degree is a BS in Electrical Engineering and it took me 5 years but that is mostly because I originally started out in the School of Arts & Sciences in Applied Math and I lost credits when I transferred to the Engineering School as they give less credit for the same classes.  For example Calculus was 5 credits per semester in A&S but is 4 credits per semester in the engineering school.

Later I went to law school where engineers like myself were less than 1%.  Really I only know of one other guy and he was going into patent law.

BS 124 credits required 124 credits taken. Masters 35 required 35 taken. Arithmetic is hard, apparently.

A university will F people hard.
Let’s say they have a College of Arts and Sciences, College or Engineering, College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, College of Education, and College of Allied Health.

Some dude took Bio 001 with lab and Bio 002 with lab for Ag Life, but it doesn’t count as Bio 101 and Bio 102 from A&S,
The one semester general chemistry and one semester organic chemistry courses from allied health count as nothing in A&S, but count as a year of chemistry in Ag Life.

The child psychology course from C. Of Ed. Does not count as a psychology course in A&S because the average SAT is a fraction of the A&S students and is not rigorous enough to.

The Greek literature and mythology course from the Classics Dept. counts as an English literature course if your advisor or you knew about it, but the Classic Art from the same dept. does not count as an A&S art requirement because it’s not from the art dept., even if your advisor told you it did.

Either the A&S Dept. of Math or C. Of Eng.  First two semesters Of Calc. count for either college, but the third semester of Calc. And Diff. Eq. Only count for for each respective college if taken there.

All of the above is stuff that can happen to people at a university, without even getting into changing majors, etc.

If someone is an Engineering  major and has an Engineering advisor, that seems to keep things pretty straight about not screwing up and taking an engineering technology major course and screwing things up. It does not, however, seem to 100% safeguard say, that another course or two from outside the department might not slip through.  

I don't know about credit hours, it was a long time ago.  Got my BS in Mech Engineering in 92 from University of California, Davis.  I entered as Aeronautical Engineering major and did the first 3 years of that program.  Full time every term (something like 19 - 22 credits per term).  

At the end of Year 3, I walked out of my Final for "Fundamental Theoretical Aerodynamics", across campus and into the Engineering Department office and changed my major to Mech.  Actually left me with like 1 LESS class to take.  My Aero classes counted as electives in the ME program.  Was very happy that I did that.  My buddies still in AE spent most of their free time in basement computer labs running Fortran programs calculating air flows.

I finished my degree in 4 years, which even then was becoming pretty uncommon.  I took the minimum of GE classes to meet the requirements:  Psych, History, Medieval Studies, Cultural Geography, Landscape Architecture and even one term of Afro-American Studies (where the black female Prof was an absolute open racist).  I was able to test out of English writing and 3 years of H.S. Spanish met my foreign language requirement.

Oh...I have never worked in the field.  Shitty time to be a fresh ME grad.  I ended up in IT where I have been since 1994.


Rob

Yes.  H1Bs are a bane for US citizen tech job position and salaries for decades.

My oldest wanted to do nuc, but figured not a lot of growth.
He was going to do mech, but decided all the job growth around this region is civil.

He’s ending up a five year grad for his BS.

My college switched from quarters to semesters for my senior year.  I'd taken a lot of classes my first two years, ended up able to graduate in 3 1/2 years.  Had maybe an hour I didn't need.

Had a friend who changed majors, didn't read the catalog closely, ended up needing two summers to graduate.

The employment adds in IEEE Spectrum Magazine used to be ridiculous.

It was part of getting an H1B approved.

You mean you cannot find a MSEE with RF training for the paltry salary offered?

It is often less than a BSEE from a decent school will start at.

You cannot have a frank discussion about why more Americans are not going into STEM without shining the light on the scurrying cockroaches of no growing STEM Professor slots as universities dump money in “studies” and “science” departments and non academic departments  that are growing Instead, post doc salaries, depressed professional incomes secondary to H1B, etc.

If you are running around with a high end IQ, you can find much better pay in many other fields and crush it.  

I was an extraordinarily un-gifted undergrad student. I tried to take as few units as possible.

It wasn't until pure blind luck (I was looking for part time work) that I fell upon - accidentally - the world of career-oriented people when I stumbled upon "directed research" in which a professor takes students into his lab and teaches them about real research. The Dept of Bacteriology offered this as a course called 199. So, I took 1 year of directed research (didn't accomplish much, as I was using sucrose gradients to try to isolate chromosomal number variants of gliding bacteria (Capnocytophaga) that had 1 to 4 chromosomes). But that was the first time I realized there was a whole other world out there filled with wannabee MDs and PhDs. I don't think I could have gotten jobs in the real world without having the real lab experience that the 199 gave to me. Because I screwed-up in my earlier years, I think the part-time lab jobs (in mycology and virology as a result of the 199) finally gave me a real goal to be in health sciences and gave me the edge I needed to apply to dental school.

Successful applicants to our dental school not only have an GPA averaging 3.6 and strong DATs, but they've also done directed research, volunteer work, and usually had clinical assisting experience. Often, they had additional outstanding features (music, sports, military, or an advanced degree). They had something to make them distinct from the other 1500 applicants.

Or... they could be from an "underprivileged area in L.A."

I changed my major 4 times and somehow managed to graduate in 5 years while playing varsity athletics.

I wasted a few classes going after a computer science (programming) minor.  Quit that at the third class I think it was when it became clear that everyone in the class was a better programmer than the professor.  He gave us a physically impossible project.  Started off fine, gave us a goal and most of the class was done in a week or so.  But he kept adding required elements to use as we got to new things in the class, so we'd continually have to go back and change our code.  It finally stacked to the point where all his stupid after-the-fact requirements literally could not work together.

Took an extra semester overall to finish nuclear engineering BS.  The above combined with picking up a physics minor instead late in the game, and the necessity to take certain semesters "easy" (credit hours wise, due to the insane difficulty of the core NE classes) is what caused it.  The extra CSC classes alone didn't do it.

198 hours on my BS in Engineering.  Turns out USMC Infantry really doesn't prepare you for Calc :)

I had some catching up to do.  Plus I did ROTC (2 yrs).  And I switched schools.  5 1/2 years I think, including every summer term.

My MS and PhD were a bit more reasonable.

My major (Forestry) required 140 hours.  I ended up with right at 160 hours as I started out in engineering then transferred into forestry.

6 years, but one of those years was working under the Cooperative Education Program.

None. And then I moved on to professional school without a degree

I graduated with a BS in History. I was also 7 credit hours short of also getting an Engineering degree.

I went to a Service Academy, if that makes more sense now....

I have a BS in biology with a chem minor.  After a few years of working I went back and earned a BS in electrical engineering.  I paid for the bio course work.  My employer paid for the engineering.  All told I probably have 200 hours between the two degrees.  

Usefulness of my degrees is EE>chem minor>Bio.  I make pharmaceuticals now.  Chem experience got me in the door.  Hard work put me in position to move into process engineering and I decided I needed to have an actual engineering degree to compete.  Since my employer paid, it was a no brainer.  Except for signals and systems.  Screw that class.  Somehow I got an A in the class but only because I ran faster than my classmates.  It wasn't because I actually figured anything out.  Much respect to you RF guys that do it for a living.  

I started with 15 semester credits thanks to Advanced Placement courses.
Graduated with just the exact number of credits, finished 6 semesters and 1 summer session, but took 4-5 calendar years since I became a co-op student and earned $ for a semester each year

There is a lot of difference between Math Department Calculus and Engineering Calculus.

When I went though VPI freshman 5 hour calculus was in the Math Department for the first
two classes.
It then moved to the engineering department.

Not a lot of math people use Laplace Transform, but it is the workhorse of EE.
Engineering Statistics is another world from Math Statistics.

Electromagnetic Fields stumps most other courses.
Even the physics guys have a hard time with it.

One of my favorite examples is how do you handle millions of hours of part testing,
when you do not have a single failure.
Pure statistics blow up on this.
You cannot divide by zero to compute a failure rate.
In Engineering we do some sleight of hand, and redefine the 'failure rate' as a bound.
As in 'The failure rate is no more than X per hour.'

We do this by assigning one failure to the test data.
The divide by zero problem is swept under the rug.

The engineering answer is "It works."

@skylane I feel your pain, buddy. I had about that many credits, because I took I bunch of classes on the ship that didn't really count towards an engineering degree. But I only have a couple of MSs. Lol. Which were considerably more reasonable.

I don't remember the hours but it took me 6 years to earn a BS in Mechanical Engineering.  I changed majors from Geology my second year.  Math requirements were much different.  Calc 3 was a senior year class in geology.  I basically needed calc 3 to start Mechanical Engineering..  I took calc based physics 1 and 2 before I took calc...so that was problematic.  Really lowered my GPA.  I didn't have too many extra classes because I got the head of the department to fill out class waivers and equivalency forms.  

I earned a Master's in Manufacturing Engineering with a 4.0, 2 years after the BS.  I've earned 2 more engineering Master's while working full time with 3 kids.  

Trying to finish a PhD now.  Finding time is difficult now.

Depends on where you went.
Some places Engineering owns their own first year of Calc,
Other places the engineering, math, pre med, chem, physics, etc. Majors all have the same first year/two semesters of Calc.

Then branch off.

Crap, I have no idea.  I tried to do the bare minimum til the end.  Got a minor in anthropology.

Did an extra quarter of "fluff, basic A&P, Latin 1 and something else, plus my past required course.  Tried to bump my GPA a little for post grad.

Do you know what it takes to be a "pre-med" student? You need to tell someone that you're a pre-med student. That's it. It's a meaningless statement.

I chose Biology because I got a full tuition scholarship in it and it covered most of my pre-med prerequisites as well. I still had to do a bit of extra class work. But for the 120 required credit hours for a BS, I think I had a total of 145 hours or so.

My wife, My daughter, and I all graduated in 8 semesters on time with BS  degrees.

Wrong thread

In all fairness, I did put pre med in quotes.

I wasn’t so much talking about on time, as number of semester hours over on time.

In what?

BS in Chem E or juice from a 90th plus percentile school vs Bio from state is a very different statement.

I lived in a dorm full of engineering students who still labored with the slide rule.

I always waved as I headed out to have a beer,

I went to SIU, and did my first two years at community college (highly recommend same piece of paper 2/3 the price) and did coop credits in high school that earned me 8 hours toward my major...

Guidance counselors are shit they screwed some of my friends over and even with mine I had to correct them on a few occasions.

The key is after you lock in with them map out what your next semester is going to be on a piece of paper/excel. Make sure you understand what each class you’re signing up for is fulfilling. Every class taken should earn you closer to your degree. I always say to try to satisfy Gen Ed requirements first, and then focus on your core school work (Major related).

I can’t remember but I ended up with like 125/130 hours or something just due to some of my mandatory course work were 5.0 CH classes. Finished in 4 years wasn’t a super senior. I had some semesters that were over 20 CH it was rough...but saved me a lot of headache

BS in Mechanical Engineering. Completed in 4 years.
I also took Biology one summer and Organic Chem the next summer to meet med school prerequisites.
I always intended to go to med school and never went to a single premed event until the start of my senior year.

I don’t remember how many credit hours I did in undergrad. We were on a quarter system. I was always taking 16-18 credits per term.

My daughter is currently a junior Mechanical Engineering student on track to be done in 4 years.

I actually ended up with pre-MED requirements by accident.

I needed some 'non engineering' classes and had taken AP biology in high school.
Then I took organic chem and then a few extra classes senior year last quarter.

I needed a 13 hour class load to be 'full time' so I took some further non required classes.

I switched majors twice (Bio -> Chem -> Math). When I applied to graduate, I found out I was 2 classes from a chem minor.

I did have to take a few classes a couple times... ultimately found out the right professor makes the class.

I know my sister switched majors a few times... ended up graduating with the degree she started off with .