Question for people who are in university/college right now

High school education in the U.S. is pretty horrible compared to college. Especially when it comes to math and science. I was able to get credit for Calc I and skip right to Calc II with AP credits. What a joke, apparently my high school class barely touched half the stuff taught in Calc I. I basically spent the whole semester playing catch up and was rewarded with a terrible grade in a five credit hour class. In retrospect, I should have just dropped the damn class.

My other AP credits in English and History, didn't count because there were no equivalent classes at the university, or some nonsense. But I'm glad I retook them, because had forgotten how to read boring novels and memorizing random historically facts.

 

I dropped out of school in about 7th or 8th grade. It was just too boring. Instead I would go to the library and read books.

No one at the school bothered to call my parents. (My mom had severe depression at that time - she wasn't engaged. Plus I had 7 brothers and a sister, so it was easy to get lost in the crowd!)

Fast forward about 5 years: I started taking college courses at a community college. It took 4 years - mostly going part-time -to make up what I had missed, plus the first two years of college. I transferred to a university, got my physics degree 5-1/2 years later, going part-time.

So, yes, if you're motivated you can learn what you need in a short period of time. The key is having the motivation.

 

I don't think highschool helped at all. I went to the same school for kindergarten all the way to grade 12 (13 horrible years haha) and it was crap all the way along haha. The teachers were horrible and very unprofessional, they formed cliques and were always trying to push out the teachers they didn't like, funny thing was the teachers they didn't like were the ones I thought were actually good at their job. I only ever had about 3 good teachers in those 13 years I was there and everytime we got a good teacher they left for somewhere better within a year. I was taught math by an english teacher, took calculus by distance learning, got screwed out of my last year of french because the french teacher (who couldn't speak french) decided not to teach it anymore. Never got to do labs or anything interesting in science classes because the school couldn't afford it. And so on, you get the picture. Definitely left me with a bitter taste in my mouth from the whole experience.

Once I got to university I definitely realized how little prepared I was due to the quality of my previous schooling. I was definitely playing catch up big time. I had to learn for the first time basic concepts I should have learned in grade 12 chem and math. Luckily I did have a good physics teacher in high school so I didn't need to relearn that to. But that being said I ended up doing really well because I tried hard to learn that material and wanted to succeed in it. So if you are worried, don't be. It will be hard to relearn things you didn't get in highschool that everyone else already knows but it can be done. You only have to catch up on things in the first semester, after that it should be ok.

 

Yea, if you put the time in I think you could catch up rather quickly. To be completely honest, your chance of success depends 50% on your willingness to put in the time and 50% getting a decent professor in your classes.

Some university professors are quite unforgiving if you haven't mastered the previous semester, but most are willing to work with you.

I think HS education will make things easier for your first year or two in college, but if you're dedicated it won't hinder you as much as you'd think (if you dropped out).

Just realize that ANYTHING is possible if you're willing to work for it, so never get discouraged.

EDIT:

But if you're asking how long it would take to learn all of what you learned in HS? Probably a summer for the math and science. I've helped some people study for standardized tests for math and science, and they knew absolutely nothing from HS (not even simple algebra), and after a couple of weeks they were ready for the exam, up to and including precalc/trig/geom/alg. I think its a matter of getting over the intimidation and picking out what information is actually useful.

 

Almost nothing. I took calculus in HS, which helped, but other than that it was all busy work.

I wish I had done what my sister is doing now: done the Running Start program, where she is taking classes AT the local community college for FREE (minus expenses for books and stuff) and it counts towards college and high school credit. She's a junior now, and will do it next year.

Would have easily shaved off a year from my college studies (general eds and math out of the way) and it would have been nearly free.

So yeah, I didn't enjoy high school. Nothing to offer.