High school can be a great time. Lots of students love the school spirit, tight-knit friends, and working toward a brighter future. But what if it’s one month into your sophomore year, and you are tired of high school already? What if you figure out early on that you don’t find pep rallies and bonfires as exciting as they look in movies, and you can’t imagine another three years of getting screamed at by the hall monitor? Or what if you realized at the beginning of junior year that you are going to be a film director if it kills you… so two more years of coursework somewhat unrelated to your major looks a little dull? If that sounds like your high school experience, then consider graduating from high school early!
But how?
How do you know if graduating early is right for you? Can you take on the workload of college? Will you feel like you’re missing out on senior year?
For Clare Johnson, a rising high school senior who has spent the past year working on graduating early, making the initial decision to accelerate was a no-brainer.
“I go to a small school, and I was academically way ahead of my class,” she says. “I was just very motivated, very mature, and a little bookish. I wanted more of a challenge than what I was getting.”
Clare isn’t as much worried about missing out on senior year as she is glad that she’ll “be leaving earlier, and thus have a lot of energy left over. The burnout rate is much higher when you stay that extra year. I feel like people get a lot less done when they’re seniors.”
What you must know
Your school counselor can offer you insight to help you make your own choices. In fact, communication and a strong relationship with your counselor are both key to graduating early.
“Students need to sit down with the people who are helping them make the decision to graduate early and make sure that they have met all their high school requirements and that they have a plan,” says Jack Cramer, the former director of guidance at Colonie High School in Albany, N.Y., and an academic advisor at Hudson Valley Community College. “Students who choose to accelerate need to have some kind of plan in place so they have an idea of where they’re going.”
The perks
Although graduating early requires extra cooperation with your guidance counselor, and often a heavier course load during your remaining time at high school, it says something to college admissions officers about your dedication to your studies.
David Graves, the senior associate director of undergraduate admission at the University of Georgia, says admission counselors really want to get to know applicants who are working on graduating early from high school. Graves says that because fewer than 10 of UGA’s nearly 16,000 annual applications for freshman admission are early graduates, “their applications are looked at a little more closely. We want to make sure they won’t be walking into a too-challenging situation. An early graduate should not just survive here, but thrive here.”
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