I suppose I should explain it. Today marks the end of the first week of my senior year of US high school. It is the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end as after this year I'll (hopefully) be heading back to England for university. Due to this I figure that I'll start updating this more often as I'll probably have more to talk about.
So to begin with I'll give you a quick rundown of how I got to be where I am now and how the timing of the English and American school systems link and how each one works - briefly.
| Age Range | UK School | US School |
|---|---|---|
| 11-12 | Year 7 (High School) | 6th Grade (Middle School) |
| 12-13 | Year 8 (High School) | 7th Grade (Middle School) |
| 13-14 | Year 9 (High School) | 8th Grade (Middle School) |
| 14-15 | Year 10 (High School) | 9th Grade - Freshman (High School) |
| 15-16 | Year 11 (High School) | 10th Grade - Sophomore (High School) |
| 16-17 | Year 12 (Sixth Form) | 11th Grade - Junior (High School) |
| 17-18 | Year 13 (Sixth Form) | 12th Grade - Senior (High School) |
Now to explain the age column to avoid confusion - the age on the left is what you start that year as and the age on the right is what you'll finish the year as. Also to give explanation to how grades etc. work in comparison/how everything is structured. In the first three years of British high school you gear up to do a set of qualifications called GCSEs - you pick your choices for these in Year 9 and start studying for them in Year 10. You finish them up with the exams at the end of Year 11. Then using these GCSEs you apply to sixth form colleges (not universities) in order to get A and AS levels for applying to University. An important thing to note here is that it is very rare for non-exam work to count towards the qualification although some classes may involve coursework which can be a large percentage of your grade - there is no GPA in the UK.
To compare this to the US system I'll dive straight into their high school portion as I've never attended US middle school so I can't really comment. Now the US high school system is driven by two main things - graduation requirements and GPA. Pupils in the US take various classes across their years of high school in order to receive the correct number of credits to graduate - quite often though these aren't the only requirements as many schools require community service to gradate which is incredibly, incredibly rare in the UK. Moving swiftly onwards into the GPA topic. GPA stands for grade point average and universities in the US take this into account when people apply. Something vastly different between the two education systems is that in the UK your homework and various class tests and projects etc. mean very, very little to your GCSE/A Level mark except that they give you practice and help you learn. In the US however your mark on pretty much everything contributes to your final grade; homework, tests, labs, quizzes, projects - you do it they'll include it.
Now you may have heard of the SAT (You almost certainly have if you're a US reader), and this is a large standardised mostly multiple-choice test that a lot of students take each year in the US as a lot of colleges (Universities) look at your scores as an extra variable as to whether you get in. This may very well be the only standalone exam that a lot of US pupils take before university and it is a massive cause of stress. Now there are also these things called AP exams but a lot of students don't do those and I'll probably explain these in a later blogpost.
Now you may have heard of the SAT (You almost certainly have if you're a US reader), and this is a large standardised mostly multiple-choice test that a lot of students take each year in the US as a lot of colleges (Universities) look at your scores as an extra variable as to whether you get in. This may very well be the only standalone exam that a lot of US pupils take before university and it is a massive cause of stress. Now there are also these things called AP exams but a lot of students don't do those and I'll probably explain these in a later blogpost.
Now all that's explained I'll tell you where I am in all of this. So I moved to the US after finishing my GCSEs which took me from Year 11 and stuck me into my Junior of High School. That was last year and my friends back in Blighty got their A level results while I was boosting my GPA. This year is the year I pull my finger out and put some considerable effort into trying to get back - have you seen foreign student fees over here? They're atrocious. So that's all for now folks.
This is the end of the beginning of the beginning of the end.
First week of senior year done.
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