Getting a leg up on your contenders is vital in any competition, and college students want to know what they can do to make themselves stand out and get a head start. This is now possible to do as early as high school.
There are over 50 comprehensive community colleges in North Carolina. Individual colleges have service areas that may include one or two counties. Students may, however, apply to institutions of their choice, regardless of their counties of residence.
In Wayne County, community colleges offer college-level classes to students of nearby high schools. These class credits my be transferable upon getting accepted into college. Many other community colleges have adapted this program.
One student at Wayne Community College, Zachary Brown, took college level courses in high school, and he has decided to finish his general education courses there before going on to a university.
“I think that they helped me personally,” Brown said. “I was able to take some advanced drafting courses through my high school, which allowed me to get a bit ahead. They offered more challenging material that wasn’t standard for being in tenth and eleventh course.”
Brown intends on going transferring to N.C. State and pursuing a degree in graphic design after completing his general education courses.
Some community and technical colleges have been making early college programs to allow students to go to high school at a community college once they’ve reached their junior year of high school. This affords them the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone in the same semester.
One student to take advantage of this was Allen Lambert, who is in the middle of his first year at the UNC Wilmington. He attended Wayne Early Middle College High School where he took college classes free of charge, and he now has junior standing at UNCW because of the credit transfers. He saw it as a great head start with few discrepancies.
“I entered into the program as a junior in high school, and by graduation, I had earned 36 college credit hours,” Lambert said. “Being dually enrolled in both high school and college really helped me ease into the college curriculum so I wouldn’t be overwhelmed once I schooling.”
