Early College High School Case Study

The most significant educational opportunity that I have taken advantage of is my decision to seek out and attend an early college high school. This decision presented barriers of its own––a fifty minute commute, an unconventional schedule, an advanced workload, and a lack of traditional high school sports and events––but my devotion to a better education led me to overcome these barriers. This devotion to a better education within the high school setting is the same reason that I am interested in the UC system. The high school that I decided to attend is what is known as an early college high school. Students are concurrently enrolled in both high school courses and college courses while still in high school. This type of education opportunity
was something that I became interested in as soon as I found out about it, but taking advantage of it presented some unique barriers to overcome. Some of these barriers are recurring, such as my fifty minute commute, or the fact that many of the classes that I have taken during the past few years have been outside of a traditional high school hours. This includes evening and night classes. Additionally there were barriers that I only had to encounter once, such as convincing my parents to let me stray from the predetermined high school that my siblings attended. I had to encourage them to go out of their way for an educational opportunity that they weren’t familiar with. In the long run, these hurdles were insignificant in comparison to the added advantage of attending an early college high school, but they were something that I had to deal with to take advantage of the opportunity. Even though there were easier paths than concurrent enrollment, I was willing to go out of my way to get the education that I wanted from the school that I loved. I have this same attitude about the University of California system.