Super seniors reflect on five years

Most incoming freshmen believe they will graduate in four years. However, every year, a small group of “super seniors” remain at the University after their friends have graduated.

A growing number of colleges have begun offering four-year degree guarantees, which promise a degree in four years as long the student meets regularly with advisers and fulfills requirements, The New York Times reported earlier this month. If the University fails to provide enough resources and classes for students to graduate, it will cover the cost of additional semesters.

Despite this growing practice, Penn administrators say they would not offer such a guarantee.

This guarantee implies that the relationship between a student and their university is “essentially an exchange relationship between a consumer and a purveyor of education,” Associate Dean of the College and Director of Academic Affairs Kent Peterman wrote in an email.

“What the community owes you as a student is not a degree but rather an opportunity to become educated,” he explained, adding that the time it takes for students to graduate depends on individuals’ decisions and commitment to their studies.

2011 College graduate Anthony Aruffo, who began as pre-med and a Biological Basis of Behavior major, decided to stay for a fifth year when he became a Philosophy major during his senior year.

When the rest of his friends graduated, he initially found himself “depressed that everyone else was moving on with life.” Ultimately, however, Aruffo said his fifth year gave him time to reflect and realize that he did not want to pursue a career in medicine.

Aruffo said Penn was cooperative when he decided to delay graduation, but the “first thing they asked me was, ‘Do you have financial aid?’” he said.

“Penn is, at its core, a business,” Aruffo added. “It treats everything, including students, as such.”

However, College super senior Andrew Lohfeld said the process of gaining financial aid to support his education for a fifth year was not difficult.

Lohfeld, who is living in Harrison College House for the fifth year in a row, said he decided to stay an extra year because he did not know what he wanted to do after graduation and had one general education requirement to fulfill.

Lohfeld added that he wish he had fulfilled more requirements for his Logic, Information and Computation major earlier in his college career.

“The University needs to be more proactive in getting freshmen to think about their majors,” Lohfeld said. “The big problem is that, by the time they figure out their major at the end of sophomore year, they have to take all the prerequisites.”

Other super seniors stay at Penn, not to fulfill requirements or to add a major, but to sub-matriculate into a graduate school.

Wharton senior Cristina Masson, the only Wharton undergraduate who was accepted to submatriculate as an MBA student this year, will stay for a fifth year and graduate with both an undergraduate degree and an MBA.

“It’s definitely a challenge trying to juggle two very different environments,” Masson wrote in an email. “On the one hand, I’m an MBA student … and on the other, I’m a senior and all of my friends are still here.”

Although “four-year guarantees” imply that the undergraduate experience should not last more than eight semesters, these super seniors seem content with their situations.

“I would hope that other people would have the opportunity [for a fifth year] if that’s what they needed,” Aruffo said.

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