When I attended Johns Hopkins as an undergraduate between 1966 and 1970, the BA required 120 credits. For anyone to graduate in ten months having earned that many credits from coursework is inconceivable, unless he entered having received credit for previous work, or tested out of introductory courses. Like every other school, Hopkins had rules, but I know from experience that they also made exceptions. It should be possible to contact the registrar and make an inquiry about Breen's record.

PS. What a clean-cut young man he was in those days!

I had somewhat of a similar experience as Walter Breen's at Johns Hopkins University, but I was in the Army, just south of him in Virginia. After about ten years straight overseas with six of them in the Vietnam War, I was back in the USA and the Army sent me to one of their schools to catch up on the military training I had missed.

It was January 1973 and the Army was quickly downsizing for the new "peacetime." It was going to be competitive to stay in the Army and it was going to be even more competitive to be promoted, so I quickly realized even senior NCOs would need a civilian education besides their Army education and experience.

When I arrived at my assignment at a Defense Communications Agency laboratory in Reston, VA in the April or May 1973, I started looking around for education opportunities. Everything I could find required me to attend classes in the daytime which was impossible with my duties, so I eventually learned about the Fort Belvoir Education Center. They had such a thing as CLEP Examinations where I could earn 30 semester hours, so I passed all of them. And if I could pass the university/college final exams they had available to them with a high score set by each institution, I could acquire more semester hours without going to class! This was great!

Because of my experiences in the Army and especially in the fast-paced environment in the war, I learned to carefully read and understand large amounts of instructions and information so I could immediately apply them in my work supporting various intelligence activities. My activities were in psywar, politics, history, construction, lines of communications, oil and lubricants, military weapons, ammunition and equipment, maps, satellites, photography, camouflage, biology, animals and insects, diseases.....you name it.

Even during the war, I also received my two periodicals; Scientific American and The Numismatist, and I read them cover to cover. Somehow I had stored all of my past experiences and reading into my brain, plus I went to the local Reston Library and read at least one book on each of the subjects of my tests, which I took two or three of them every two to three weeks. Each test was worth two to four semester hours with most of them worth three.

Of the tests I took over eighteen months, I passed all of them but for two or three where I did not make a high enough score to be awarded the credits without going to class. So I retook those two or three tests after a mandatory waiting period and passed all of them the second time. By the time I departed in December 1975 for another assignment I had acquired 157 semester hours, and I was also newly married and had published my first numismatic catalog. It can be done, but you must put a limit your extracurricular activities!