I think she said after her first or midway through her second year? That's a long time to be faking being a student and then having a fake job. I wondered because the university sent some letter to Emily's home address. It seems unusual that Emily would have her home address listed in her information, because if she was having trouble, flunking, and then dropping out a lot of letters and documentation would be sent to her.
shareThey didn't think that storyline through and they don't send a lot of paper documentation in general home anymore. Realistically Emily would've put her current address in that spot. I was always shocked that her mom didn't go to her fake graduation because Emily's her only child. But didn't Emily say that she only had a couple of classes left so the timeline isn't clear.
"When life gives you lemons"
Jessica D: sleep with their fathers and have secret lemon children
According to the conversation that Emily and Paige had, they broke up approximately a little after the period that Emily's dad and said that they hadn't seen one another for around 3 years. It can be assumed that Emily dropped out not long after that. This means that Emily finished at least 2 - 2 and a half years of university. So it could be true that she only needs to take a few more classes. How many classes are "a few classes" to her is debatable though.
Given that Emily has been keeping things from people since she was a teenager, she might have found ways around keeping her mom from finding out about her dropping out. Also, Pam's husband had just died, so that might have made her distraught to and not paying attention to details because she was busy sorting out Wayne's affairs.
But it could also just be an oversight in a lazily written storyline that the writers brought in for the shock factor. My money is on the second explenation