Ball State winter graduation offers financial and career advantages

For some Ball State students, the traditional May graduation isn’t the only path to a diploma. Fall commencement offers a chance for students to finish their degrees early and pursue new opportunities ahead of schedule.

Alissa Kizer, a fourth-year elementary education student at Ball State University, is one of many choosing to graduate this winter. For Kizer, the decision came down to careful planning and a desire to advance in her career.

“For me, the big factor was student teaching. Everyone told me student teaching in the fall is so much more beneficial than in the spring because you get to see the first day of school, you get to see parent-teacher conferences [and] a lot of beginning of year testing,” she said.

To graduate this winter, Kizer took 18 credit hours for three semesters and completed summer courses, a strategy that required self-discipline but never felt overbearing.

“It wasn’t like I was overloaded. I never felt like, ‘Why am I graduating early when I could do this extra semester?’” she said.

Currently, Kizer is finishing her last semester of school in Westfield, Ind., where she’s doing her student teaching in a second-grade classroom at Carey Ridge Elementary School. The work has allowed her to avoid the costs of an additional semester.

According to data from Ball State University on undergraduate tuition fees, in-state, full-time students taking 12-18 credit hours pay a flat rate of $4,474 for basic tuition per semester, while out-of-state, full-time students taking 12-18 credit hours pay a flat rate of $13, 748, effective Fall 2024 through Summer 2025

However, these costs don’t include fees for student services, programs and courses, as well as any mandatory and miscellaneous fees unique to the student.

“I’m not having to pay for that extra semester of college, and so [I’m] getting that student teaching experience and not [wasting] a bunch of time where I’m just sitting around my dorm room,” Kizer said.

Another financial benefit of early graduation is avoiding unnecessary housing expenses. Kizer noted that many leases don’t allow for six-month terms, meaning students who graduate in the spring might pay for housing they don’t need during student teaching.

This is a big reason why Kizer decided to live at home for her last semester.

However, she also emphasized the fact that students don’t get paid for student teaching, despite the fact that they still have to pay for the accompanying course.

“Being out of a [paying] job for five months is hard,” she said. “It’s nice that I get to live at home [without] having to pay for rent, which a lot of people are if they graduate [in the spring].”

Kizer already plans to begin two full-time nanny jobs in January, which will provide income before she moves to Missouri with her fiancé next fall. There, she plans to substitute teach while familiarizing herself with the state’s school systems. And graduating in December allows Kizer to start work as early as Dec. 15.

“I’ve talked to some teachers [in Missouri]. Their curriculum and their schooling is a little bit different than Indiana’s,” she said. “I think it’ll be nice to get my foot in the door, make those connections and then hopefully make getting a job easier.”

According to the 2022 Indiana College Completion Report, individuals with a bachelor’s degree earn 85 percent more annually than high school graduates.

For students like Kizer, winter graduation has positioned them to receive these financial benefits much sooner.

“I think I would have felt silly if I had stayed in college that extra semester just because I could,” she said. “To say I finished college in three and a half years is a big achievement.”

For students looking to graduate early to get a head start on their careers, Kizer’s advice is to plan ahead, especially when scheduling courses.

“If I had gone into freshman year thinking I was going to graduate early, I honestly think I could have done a whole year early,” she said.

Kizer said she only took 12-13 credits the first two semesters she was enrolled at Ball State, which meant she had to take summer courses later on to achieve a winter graduation.

“I could have loaded up those classes … But because I didn’t think about it until my sophomore year, I was a little bit behind,” she said.

Char Hawkins, assistant director for Student Success Coaching at Ball State University, expressed the importance of “establishing a strong support system” with people further along in the process of preparing for graduation.

Within her work, Hawkins challenges students to “take a deep breath” and “adopt a gratitude mindset.”

“No matter how much planning or preparation is done prior to a transition, change is hard,” she said. “Students work hard to achieve this milestone, and although it is exciting to accomplish such goals, it can also be scary to enter the unknown.”

To combat this, Kizer’s adviser played a big role in her ability to graduate in the winter. She said she met with them to discuss whether a winter graduation was even possible for her. Her adviser cautioned her when she decided to make this decision, making sure Kizer had time to commit to the extra coursework.

“We sat down, and we played with [my] schedule. I was working a part-time job at the time, and doing 18 credits [with] a part-time job is not for the weak,” she said.

Kizer is confident the prospect of an early graduation has set her up for success, both financially and professionally. While she said the accelerated timeline required sacrifices, she doesn’t feel her college experience was diminished.

“I still got three full years of that on-campus college experience,” Kizer said. “And I think, down the road, I’ll really appreciate the money I have from graduating early and the experience I got from student teaching in the fall.”

News Editor Katherine Hill contributed to this story. 

Contact Meghan Braddy via email at [email protected] or on X @meghan_braddy.