There is a high school class dedicated to applying to college, with the “final project” being that you applied somewhere? Wow... this is surprising to me!
Can you apply to any school, including trade schools for, say, welding?
Can you apply to any school, including trade schools for, say, welding?
For my particular high school, the class was called Avid (https://www.avid.org). It's a college-preparatory class you may take all four years, with junior year being the year the class focuses on, amongst other things, studying for the SAT/ACT, applying to colleges, etc. My high school's Avid program mostly consisted of low-income, first-generation Hispanic students.
Going on a tangent, it's interesting to think about. Today, I came across an old friend from the same high school, same graduation, and from that same program working at Target full-time. He's Hispanic, low-income, and first-generation. He mentioned school ended not working out for him. I have another old but closer friend from the same high school and same graduation year but not from that program - he's American, middle-class, and not a first-generation student. He graduated from UC Berkeley last December and just started working at a finance company in San Francisco making roughly 85k/year. It's interesting in a way where I'm thinking about what heavily affected their lives to lead to both their different outcomes and the possible ways there are to bridge that gap, at least from the perspective of the old friend working at Target.
The program's site states the success rate of the program itself is high but from mere observation of old friends from that program, I unfortunately don't think that's the case. But above all, it reminds of this note written by and from Jordan Peterson's new book where he talks about lobsters in the first chapter: "to those who have everything more will be given; from those who have nothing, everything will be taken away." It seems to me then that if one wants to get out of, say of a generational low-income family, that person must be do something drastic: deliberate practice, a shift in perspective, etc. But first, they must be aware of this and that's the tough part, I think.
Two thoughts: (1) such courses are often opt-in and don't necessarily have tons of free time for off-topic discussions; and (2) many schools with such courses do in fact have robust CC-tracked options that all-honors students are not exposed to.
1. A class like this was offered by my high school (years and years ago...) I didn't take it. However, from what I remember talking with friends, our school's course was explicitly for people who were planning on going to college. So it'd be kind of weird to discuss alternatives. That would be like mentioning in a Biology course that Physics or English are also legitimate fields of study.
You'd think such a course would be wishy-washy and have plenty of time for discussing alternatives, but actually it was quite a serious thing.. Most of the students who took the course thought they were on-track for ivy league applications and then got a dose of reality in the form of a below-average standardized test score. They had a couple months to learn how to pattern-match and flash-card their way into the 90th percentile starting from the 50th percentile. I distinctly remember more than one person dropping AP Calc so they could focus on the college prep course...
(In other news, grade inflation and subjective grading are harmful because they are sparse & deceptive reward signals!)
2. Community college was very much not looked down upon; in fact, we had a robust partnership with the regional CC system and many students would spend junior and senior years splitting their week between HS and CC.
However, if you were honors/AP/college-tracked, then you wouldn't really know that those students even existed unless you socialized with those students. I only knew about these programs because of my friend group.
At a recent reunion, I talked with some guys who I recognized from my AP courses. They were complaining that our high school didn't offer non-college-tracked options. I mentioned the various programs my friends had made use of and they were shocked and swore up and down that those programs didn't exist when we were in school.
I wonder if either of these two things is true for OP. IME it's fairly rare for an entire high school -- let alone an entire school district -- to not have robust options for CC-tracked students. Maybe in super-affluent areas?
> Sounds like my sex-ed class in Georgia which never even discussed birth control.
Yeah... state law. Same for me. I had a teacher who risked her job to give us good info. If that was the case for anyone else reading this, consider looking up that teacher and sending a gift card or something their way. Doing so is a huge personal and professional risk.
The idea that a high school would have anything to do with preparing you for post-secondary education, or advising you on what type of institution to get it from, is totally foreign in districts like this.
But regarding the first point, the program is mandatory. As for the second, I haven't heard of any other options and I doubt they exist, but as you point out it may just be the circles I interact in. And of course attending boarding school is a choice, though I can't speak for what the situation is at the other schools.
> I distinctly remember more than one person dropping AP Calc so they could focus on the college prep course...
This comment really made me smile. I wonder how much that was actually motivated by wanting to focus on college and how much was just wanting an excuse to get out of AP Calc. AP Calc sucks.