The aim to shorten the time to master's degree has been a central issue in educational politics in Finland since the 1960's. At that time an international comparison was made between Finland, USA and the UK, which indicated that the time to master's degree in Finland was too long. Since then there have been many discussions and attempts to reduce time-to-degree as well as studies that have attempted to discover how to reduce it. Now that the Finnish University system is doing through a major transition with the Bologna process the topic has raised major interest again. In my study I have approached the dilemma of reducing time-to-degree from a different viewpoint. This study focuses on those students whose time to completion of a master's degree is considerably shorter than that of an average student in Finland; using Bourdieu's theory of capitals as a frame of reference. An ex post facto criterion group design is used where the criterion is formed from all who graduated at the University of Turku, Finland, during the years 1999, 2000 and 2001. From these students whose time-to-degree was among the fifteen per cent of the fastest at their respective faculties were selected to form the accelerated group. For the counterpart of the criterion group a stratified sampling method was used and every fifth of those that graduated during the same years was selected, making sure that each faculty would be present in the same amount as in the criterion group. All six faculties (Medicine, Law, Education, Natural Sciences, Humanities and Social sciences) of the University of Turku, Finland, were present. The data was collected by using surveys in both of the groups and by interviewing 40 of the accelerated graduates. The aim of this study is to find out, what kind of factors are related to short time-to- degree, how does the background of the student affect time-to-degree and what kind of study strategies the accelerated group have used in order to shorten their time-to-degree.The main results of the preliminary study, the survey for the accelerated group, indicated that the background of the student does affect time-to- degree. Most of the accelerated students had a lot of financial support and encouragement. But two thirds of the parents of accelerated students had a low education. Also previous academic success on the lower levels of education seem to be related to the time to completion of a master's degree. The theoretical significance of this study is that it may help determine what kind of a theoretical background would be best suited to the understanding of rapid graduation. Finding out the successful study strategies that may help reduce time-to-degree forms the practical significance of this study. Keywords: higher education, time to degree, acceleration, academic achievement, capital, undergraduate study, master's degree