The Fastest Graduation in SEAS History
Brian Daley SEAS ’24 finished his degree in just five semesters.
You could say that Brian Daley SEAS ’24 speed-ran Columbia. The first-years who matriculate each fall typically expect a full four-year experience—long enough to develop their intellect, character, sense of purpose, and perhaps land a job along the way. At Columbia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, the curriculum is known to be especially rigorous, requiring both Technical Core STEM classes in addition to traditional liberal arts courses.
But Daley did things a bit differently. While his Class of 2026 peers are currently slogging through their junior spring, Daley managed to compress the traditional four-year college journey into just five semesters, graduating in December 2024—a record for SEAS.
“I tried looking online,” Daley told Sundial. “I couldn't find anything. And I emailed multiple deans, and all of them said we have no record of anyone graduating in five semesters. And so that's when I realized, ‘Oh, wow. I don't think that anyone has ever done this before.’”
The Idaho native describes himself modestly as a “junior graduating early,” despite completing a B.S. in computer science with a minor in statistics all while maintaining a 3.9 GPA.
During our interview, he described his impressive achievement in such a casual and friendly tone that almost made me believe most Columbia students could accomplish the same. But behind his humility is a story of relentless strategy and self-discipline.
To graduate in five semesters, Daley transferred the maximum number of AP credits (16) then undertook a course load of 18, 21, 21, 26, and 26 credits for each respective semester he was enrolled.
Daley originally intended to graduate just one year early. “When I first got my approval from Columbia, we didn't receive any financial aid, which would have made it a bit of a strain on my parents’ finances in terms of retirement planning and so on,” Daley said. “So I just wanted to lighten the burden financially on both myself and my family.”
After his fourth semester registration, Daley realized he could “just do 26 and 26 and graduate in just five semesters, and then everything would work out. And it just happened to line up, super, super luckily.”
Now, Daley has moved to Philadelphia to work full-time at Susquehanna, a global trading and technology firm. As a quantitative trader, he’s putting his computer science degree to use by “trading US equity single-stock options,” which he explained is like “math for the stock market.”
For Daley, a university education is first and foremost an “investment” that he believes his current career path will pay off. “I think that I would have only attended Columbia if I knew that I was going to be getting a very high return on my investment, right? Because at the end of the day, going to a private university is an investment, and they are a business that they’re trying to make money from,” he said.
“I don’t think that the price tag would have been worth it if I were to be doing something that wouldn’t be as lucrative as quant trading or software engineering,” he added.
Daley doesn’t think he missed out on his college years, although he’ll miss his friends. “The two-and-a-half years I experienced at Columbia were enough to have a good college experience. Past that, I think a lot of it is just the same experience you already had,” he said. “I don't know if I want to be paying $50,000 per semester to see my friends.”
Yet Daley says his friends were the best part of his time at Columbia. “Pretty much all of my closest friends at Columbia are leagues smarter than me. Just being able to talk to them and learn from them, and work on homework with them, and just see how they view the world is so humbling, because I feel like I have so much to learn from my friends at Columbia,” he said. “I wish I was as smart as them, but unfortunately, I just have to work hard and get lucky because I'm not.”
He describes his 3.9 GPA as something he “very fortunately scraped by” to achieve. Surprisingly, Daley said he had the most trouble with classwork during his first and lightest semester, where he took 18 credits. “I wasn’t too good at managing my time when I came to Columbia,” he admitted. “I was doing this thing where I would sleep three hours at night and then take naps during the day to try to optimize how many waking hours I would have so I could have as much time to work as possible.”
As his credit count increased in his following semesters, Daley doubled down on a learning strategy: “I would evaluate whether or not I really needed to do things like attend all of the lectures, when I could just watch the lectures on two-times speed afterwards, or just read the lecture notes, or even just come to the exam and only do the homework for some classes that weren’t really relevant to my major or my career path,” he said.
Daley admitted that a drawback of this strategy was that he “didn’t really experience too much” of some professors.
At Columbia, students must petition the Committee on Academic Standing to register above the credit limit, which is 21 credits per semester at SEAS. Daley said his first petition was accidentally approved. “When I tried to register for all 26 credits, I got an email from my advisor saying, ‘Hey, you were actually only partially approved,’” he said “Because the initial email had a typo saying that I was fully approved, I was able to fight.”
Despite his positive experience graduating early, Daley doesn’t necessarily recommend it to others. “If you can comfortably afford it, then I would probably say, take those formative young years of your life and spend it with your friends and make mistakes in college, learn all these things that are super beneficial about the college experience you should have to the fullest,” he said. “However, when it does become a bit of a financial burden, or you have other opportunities that you need to pursue, I am very supportive of other people that want to graduate early.”
“My final takeaway would be that your college experience is both a rewarding and integral part of your young adult life. However, it is also a business and an investment that you have to make into your future, and you need to weigh the pros and cons of your college experience with both your financial and professional life after.”
Ms. Weinfeld is a sophomore at Columbia College studying political science and creative writing. She is a staff writer for Sundial.
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