Students should take advantage of summer classes to advance their career, save money and exercise their brains.
Graduating on-time, or early, can be a strong indicator to future employers that you are organized and have a solid work ethic. As fun as college can be, nobody wants to be the one that took an excessive number of years to complete a degree.
Although students might not opt to take classes every summer, summer classes can be an amazingly useful tool if they are looking to finish quicker.
Summer classes also condense the credit for an entire normal semester’s worth of work into six short weeks of dedicated work. For many, this may be a major benefit that is akin to ripping off the Band-Aid now, rather than slowly dragging out the pain over several months. Students should really treat their time as even more valuable than money.
Depending on your situation, summer classes can also save a tremendous amount of money that would otherwise be spent on another full semester of rent and living expenses. If you are staying at your own place, you are well aware of how rent and living expenses tend to be among your highest expenses. Instead of taking the slow road to success, summer classes let you save money for your future, or an epic travel destination once you graduate.
Everyone’s situation is different, but for KSU student Brandon Lee, a junior in exercise science major and a former Marine, it is much cheaper in the long run for him to take summer classes.
“I decided to take summer classes since I get the GI bill, which basically pays my rent for now while I’m in school and work part-time,” Lee said. “If I am not a full-time student, then I don’t get the full housing allowance.”
Besides all of the time and money that is saved, the cognitive benefits of taking summer classes should also be taken into account. Rather than letting your brain turn to mush over the summer, keep your mind sharp by taking a couple of classes. Since you’ll already be in the routine of hitting the books, there will be less of an initially reluctant phase when the fall semester starts.
In addition, taking one or two courses over the summer, as opposed to juggling four to six subjects in a normal semester, will allow students to better absorb the material and make the course much more enjoyable.
Class sizes also tend to be smaller, and, according to research from the National Education Association, students in smaller classes not only perform better when compared to their peers in larger classes but tend to score higher on standardized tests as well.
In the end, everyone has a different style that works best for them, but for many students, summer classes can be a major godsend for a variety of different reasons.
