Right now I have 8.5 credits (if you count one credit equivalent to a year of one high school course). My urgent goal is to receive the high school diploma by the end of this summer. Any extension past that is not possible. I have looked around the world and back for programs in hopes of finding one that will propel me towards my goal. Based on that one credit equals a singular high school year-long course, schools around my area require relatively 23 total high school credits to receive the high school diploma. I have looked into the options of one-time tests such as the GED however for my case as I am aiming to graduate a high-tier university (Yale, Cornell, Harvard, etc.) having the GED without a high school diploma does not give a good outlook for my chances of acceptance. Here is my question: Are there any programs that are structured towards completing the high school diploma in a summer or so or are there any programs you suggest would assist me out of this seemingly impending barrier (the high school diploma). It is the only obstacle between me and college. As for any of you who may think it is too early, I have already been strongly recommended by my instructors to do so, every one of them would recommend me to do so. There are no worries in my mind I can enter college smoothly. The credits I have completed so far are:
Mathematics: 3 credits (3 credits needed to graduate for schools near me)
English: 1 credit (4 credits needed to graduate for schools near me, I just need Advanced 10th grade English, AP Lang and AP Lit)
Social Studies: 1 credit (3 credits needed to graduate for schools near me, specifically 1 in Advanced U.S. History, 0.5 in Advanced Economics, and 0.5 in Advanced Government)
Science: 1 credit (3 credits needed to graduate for schools near me, no specific requirements, but I am highly recommended to take Honors Chemistry and Honors Physics)
General Electives: 2 credit (7.5 credits needed to graduate for schools near me, no specific requirements, just general electives needed)
Physical Education: 0.5 credits (1 credit needed to graduate for schools near me, no specific requirements, just a physics education course)
Fine Arts: 0 credits (1.5 credits needed to graduate for schools near me)
You have 8.5 credits. You need 23. Even with all the will in the world, I don’t see how you can cram that in between now and the end of the summer.
Why must you finish before the end of this summer? If you were enrolled in a normal high school, you would be applying to college in the fall of your senior year, then recieving admissions offers in the spring while still enrolled in high school. You would graduate in the spring and then start college in the fall after graduating. By that schedule, you have at least 14 months to finish your high school diploma.
At DD’s high school, 8.5 credits is sophomore standing, and barely that. I also don’t see how you could get it done by the end of summer.
I don’t understand your rush to complete high school, but I can tell you that none of the colleges you listed would be remotely impressed by a GED or even a rush job through the system. You need four credits in each of the cores, including a foreign language, in order to be a competitive applicant.
Excellent grades and test scores are merely a baseline for those colleges. It’s everything else on your application that really gets you in. When you rush it, you don’t have the time to seed, shape, and build a sufficient “everything else”.
I find it hard to believe your teachers are encouraging this. If they are, they are either unaware of your Yale-Cornell-Harvard dreams, or they are extraordinarily naïve about what those top schools are looking for. Realistically, you can take the GED, but the college you’ll be heading to will be a community college or it’s near equivalent, not the ivy league.
Why? Almost all college options for Fall 2019 are not on the table except for community college.
See above
There might not be any worries in your mind, but at least for the 3 colleges listed, there will be plenty of worries in their mind. There is zero chance of them admitting a 15/16 year old student without a compelling reason.
Then I would ask them for there suggestions on a recommended course of action.
That is the exact reason I want to get over high school. It takes forever, at least for me. I have already a year of college credits behind my back from the local college. I am planning on going to a highly ranked medical school. Medical school is not forgiving. It is one of the hardest years of education one could imagine. Preparation for that is without a doubt necessary. I want to move onto a college with a name. Not a public state university but rather a undergraduate university ranked relatively in the top 10 of all universities in the world. I am unsure of Cornell’s ranking, but I believe it is best for me to attend Cornell University as all aspects of college life at Cornell seamlessly fit my needs. It is the perfect college for me in my opinion!
Moving onto my reasoning behind why I do not desire to continue high school past the end of this summer.
After taking rigorous college classes, I began noticing more and more how much more efficient college is than high school in terms of going through content. Year-long high school courses take a whole school year to go through material along with cumbersome repetitiveness. I have grown to do tasks quickly throughout my journey in college classes. I actually recently completed a singular high school course which I completed as I was taking other courses, in approximately one month. If I were to have done this course with more dedication, I could have completed it in a matter of one or so weeks. In summary, high school is a tedious long 4-year process.
With doubts aside, please answer the question I was seeking from the beginning, “Are there any programs that are structured towards completing the high school diploma in a summer or so or are there any programs you suggest would assist me out of this seemingly impending barrier (the high school diploma)”. I understand your concerns and believe me, I am not underestimating the system nor overestimating my ability. I know what I am doing, and I have planned this thoroughly. The only missing piece to my puzzle is the answer to this question. Any assistance would be much appreciated.
The answer is no. And given your goal of med school you are going about it all wrong. Maybe you would be happier with something like the Bard Early College. https://simons-rock.edu/
As far as I know, there are no legitimate programs where you will be able to complete your high school diploma in one summer.
HS is not a race to the finish. HS is where you take the time to build the foundation for the course you will need in college, especially so for math and science. If you want to go to med school, you will need near perfect grades and you will not have the foundation you need if you try to cut corners in HS.
I’ll use Cornell CAS as an example since that’s the school you mentioned:
Admission Requirements
First-year students
High school courses of 16 units, including:
4 of English
3 of mathematics
3 of science
3 of one foreign language
Also recommended: an additional unit of advanced mathematics and science
Standardized Testing
(Those units = years)
SAT or the ACT
SAT Subject Tests required in two different subjects
If English is not your first language: TOEFL or IELTS
Although not required, a campus visit is strongly recommended, along with attendance at an information session.
Find more information about first-year admission requirements here:
https://admissions.cornell.edu/apply/first-year-applicants/admissions-requirements
Aside from your HS transcript and test scores, you also need to show involvement in ECs, leadership, volunteer hours, etc… And even if you have perfect scores and all the supporting extras, the odds for admission are still slim.
Rushing through school is a sure way to not have an application that will be competitive.
Are you a domestic or international student?
I am positive that of all educational programs in the world. I have heard of some who have graduated very quickly (less than one year). Again, please do not be concerned about whether this will affect my performance later on. I have already done rigorous courses with upwards of 100-150 lab hours along with research.
As for the Bard Early College, it does not fit me as it is of a college which is not at my desired rank and also is a program that limits what I can do in college. They will not allow me to take the courses I desire.
Rather than rushing through high school, why don’t you find out if your local school offers a dual-enrollment program. Take college classes to earn the equivalent high school credits. Then when you have the HS diploma, apply to Yale, Cornell, or wherever you want, and take advantage of advanced standing for the classes you’ve already taken. Keep in mind though that medical schools don’t really care as much about where you completed your undergraduate programs as they do about your grades, and what you did while an undergrad.
By all means then, ask the people you know who have graduated HS in less than one year how they did it.
In my near 50 years of life, I know no one who managed in less than 3 years (and for the record, that person had abysmal results when applying to colleges). I know students who graduated young at 16, but they skipped early grades in elementary school, and still took 4 years in HS.
You keep using these gerunds like this is a fait accompli; Med school admissions (or admissions to top undergrad programs) is not a given.
Indeed not. Nor is the admissions process. If med school is a goal, then you may want to relook at your undergraduate goals as a college outside the “top 10” may not have the type of grade deflation that impacts GPAs.
I’ll assume that you are aware that all college grades, including those from HS, are included in your GPA for med school admissions.
You might want to look at an early college program like:
https://simons-rock.edu/early-college/index.php
ETA: Since we crossposted, apparently the OP is disregarding Bard, so I’ll just move on.
momofsenior1, I will be applying to Cornell as a transfer student if all goes well with my plans to finish high school next spring. I have already completed all requirements for Cornell CALS transfer students. You see, I just need a high school diploma.
momofsenior1, if I did not have the smarts to ask such a person, I would not be able to have done anything. I do not know these people who have graduated high school quickly personally but rather indirectly.
skieurope, I understand medical school is not a given. When you have hopes like mine, you do not give up saying that medical school is not for me. I am prepared to get into medical school through thick and thin. I understand both high school and undergraduate GPA will be accounted for in the medical school admissions process. As mentioned before early college is simply not for me.
Does anyone know of courses which are combined? By “combined”, I mean to say which courses which are worth two credits but yet are “combined” into a singular course. I know of one included in a local school, biology and chemistry, however as I already have taken high school biology, this course would be not of much use to me. The following are a list of combined high school courses which I am seeking however you may tell me of any combined courses you know of.
Chemistry and Physics (or any other combined science course)
Any combined course in social studies
Any combined course for general electives
Any combined course for English
Any combined course for foreign language
Combined mathematics course at the Calculus level or higher
I don’t believe it’s possible a high school course is generally between 150-180 hours of work, and you need over 15 of them.
A high school course is not 150-180 hours of total work a week. Your case may vary but for me, at maximum, one high school course requires 3-5 hours of work a week, that is, a year-long high school course,
The user was quoting total hours per year-long course, not hours per week.