Suppose you’re a college freshman picking classes. How many semesters, at minimum, will it take you to graduate?

It all depends on your degree requirements and the bottlenecks. A bottleneck is a class that you have to take at a certain time to stay on schedule. In other words, if you don’t take the bottleneck class, your graduation is delayed by a semester.

For example, this was my major’s path (the bottleneck is marked in red):

Unfortunately, I took Data Structures and Discrete Math in separate semesters:

Because I failed to identify the bottleneck, my pipeline was delayed by an entire semester. I missed out on some opportunities later in my college career and my graduation date was saved only by pure luck.

Find out where the bottleneck is in your degree plan, and make sure you can graduate in the semester you want.