Students eager to take up college opportunities

Granite Bay High’s unique academic environment has always encouraged students to improve and push themselves to the best of their ability.

While most students take at least one or two Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate classes, some students have been able to seek higher education through various opportunities that are provided by colleges.

Students at GBHS have the opportunity to take different courses offered by both local and distant California colleges. Some take these courses in order to get college credit for a class that could have otherwise been taken on campus at GBHS.

“Taking a college course online gave me automatic college credit and opened room in my schedule,” said senior Julie Markham about taking U.S. History (History 17B) online through Sierra College.

Markham said it was nice to go at her own schedule while taking the class over the summer.

Many online classes, however, suffer from a lack of quality in learning due to the individual style of teaching.

“There was very little learning,” said senior Cole Fowler, who also took the online History 17B class at Sierra College. “You had to do it on your own. I had a lot of friends who were (taking the class) too, so we did a lot of collaboration.”

Fowler said that even though the quality of teaching was very low, he’d recommend taking the course online for college credit and the ability to take the course at your own pace.

There are many other courses offered at Sierra College besides History 17B, online and off campus, that high school students can take to earn credit.

Senior Tiaira Chaney is currently taking an Introduction to Biology course at Sierra College to help with her future career in nursing.

“I’m taking the courses (now) so that I don’t have to (take as many classes) or spend (as many) years in order to graduate,” Chaney said.

Chaney isn’t just hoping to fill a graduation requirement – she’s looking to get a head start on her future. She also figured it would be better to pass the college class than take the AP Biology class at GBHS and risk not passing the AP exam.

High-achieving students like Chaney have many more advanced courses available to them. For example, senior Rathip Rajakumar took up an opportunity at Stanford University’s summer program.

Offering applications the December before the program starts, Stanford selects high school students to join a nine-week college course program. This summer, Rajakumar spent his nine weeks studying economics and management engineering.

“It was (much) more rigorous than anything else and I think I learned a lot more from the classes (I took at Stanford) than any other class I’ve taken because I really pushed myself harder,” Rajakumar said. “I was really surprised by how well GBHS has prepared us for (a college) environment.”

Rajakumar said that even at Stanford’s high-level classes, they weren’t expecting a lot more than some rigorous courses at GBHS would expect from students here.

Aside from on-campus summer courses, Stanford University also offers other resources to high school students.

A program that isn’t well known to most high school students is Stanford University’s online high school, a program for students who are high-achieving academically. Freshman Aurora Jackson is a student at GBHS who also attends Stanford Online High School.

New to GBHS, Jackson got accepted into the Stanford program in sixth grade. Jackson was already bumped up a grade level in her language arts and math classes at her previous middle school, so she figured it was time for her to find a better fit for her academic skills.

A recipient of the Caroline D. Bradley scholarship, Jackson made her way into Stanford’s online program with her tuition fully paid.

“Since I was little, I’ve been trying to move ahead and continue to challenge myself academically, so this seemed like the next step,” said Jackson. “I really feel like I’ve made the right decision.”

Jackson comes to GBHS every morning for zero period and first period band, and then heads home for the rest of the day to take her online Stanford classes.

Colleges are always working to be accommodating for high school students of all backgrounds, and many students who have taken college courses agree there are many benefits involved.

“Taking the history class (at Sierra) over the summer was a really good idea in terms of reducing stress of the workload because, as great of a class as AP United States History is, it (can) take up a lot of your time and stress,” Rajakumar said. “(Enrolling in an) online (class) is a good way to fill a requirement for your (University of California admission requirements), and you reduce the amount of stress on yourself.”