I am assuming that there are many Middle College programs around the country, though I am not sure if they are similar to mine. The Middle College program that is offered to my peers and I is a program that my high school district collaborates on with my local community college. About 200 students apply each year and 30 students for junior and senior year each get accepted. In a sense, I would be taking college level courses since I would be in regular community college courses, excepting Literature and History, which the program has selected teachers for (though they are still considered college-level). We get both high school credits and college credits. I assume that most college credits won’t transfer to private colleges, but I’m not really concerned about that. Since the program is well established, we also do have guidance counselors/advisors, who guide us through college applications and courses.
The advantages to taking this program are the variety of courses available (Astronomy, Engineering, etc.), and the challenging level of the courses (though I wonder, are community college courses significantly challenging for colleges to consider?)
Are colleges impressed with Middle College in any way? Do they like the fact that students are more independent and take college level courses in high school?
Would it be more favorable than going to my public school? My public school is nationally ranked, and is quite competitive and rigorous in itself, though I would only be taking 4 Honors and 4 AP courses there (mostly in my Senior year and Junior year).
Middle College sounds like Dual Enrollment. DE is an alternative some students pursue rather than just taking IB or AP courses. I don’t think it impresses them anymore than AP/IB courses do. However, I see that the program is slightly different. Community college courses are sometimes difficult for 4-year schools to judge because they’re not sure about the quality or rigor of the curricula.
It’s not going to hurt you but you might want to just go to your public school if you’re thinking about big aspirations OOS.
Middle College is a good program AS LONG AS you maintain your EC’s (and, of course, get grades in the B+ to A range! No one’s impressed with a C in AP or college classes).
Although it’s community college, it gives you more leeway in choosing your classes and thus in charting a personal course of study and show your intellectual curiosity. It also goes very fast - if you take 3 “Middle College” classes, they’ll be regular “college paced” classes, ie., you’ll cover in 4 months what you’d cover in a year in HS… and thus it allows you to accelerate considerably for some subjects such as math and foreign language, provided the CC has non-elementary/non-remedial classes in these subjects.
The trap is to forget you need to keep interesting ECs - and since you’re on a college campus, there’ll be an expectation at Top 25 colleges that you got involved with some kind of research (ie., did scut work for a professor, don’t worry, no one expects you to cure cancer from your community college locker. But they DO expect you developed a relationship with a professor and delved deeply into one subject in a different way than most HS students do.)
Thank you @MYOS1634. Do you know whether colleges would prefer me to stay in regular public school opposed to middle college? I would be able to take roughly the same classes (except perhaps the rigor of math).
Middle College would probably be more appealing since you’d have the opportunity to “accelerate” in some subjects, as well as chart your own path. Would you be taking 5 college classes per semester? If so, that’d be 10 classes instead of 7-8 in High School.
@MYOS1634, Yes, I would be taking 4 -5 classes every quarter. (12 classes total a year, but I have the opportunity of taking more if I paid for every class). However, I wouldn’t know that I would accelerate in certain subjects, because I could instead take Calc BC for Senior year, which is the extent of what I can take at MC. The same is for AP Physics C Mechanics.
Couldn’t you accelerate, if you already have the equivalent of calc 1, by taking Calc 2 (hence completing BC), then differential equations and discrete maths? Or doesn’t your cc offer diff. eqs and discrete math?
I would only be able to take up to Calc BC considering the semesters/quarters I have in the year.
do u go to de anza? im currently doing middle college at de anza. but yeah, colleges dont care if you do mid college or not. its just an alternative.
In Middle College, are you with selected HS students only or mixed in with college and adult students?
Does it take place on a 4-year college campus or a community college?