As LOSD is one of the leading districts in academics in Oregon, it makes sense to see many LOHS students applying for college each year. The land of college is a foreign place to most high school students. Moving across the country to a new city is scary and even moving within the state presents significant challenges.

College is supposed to be academically challenging. The intention is to take knowledge from high school and introduce more topics and information to bring students to a level of professional knowledge, and LOHS offers more classes than just the standard high school introductory courses to prepare its students for college classes, offering multiple years of AP Calculus, AP science classes, AP history classes, AP Language, and even AP art that can all count for college credit. LOHS takes the first step towards offering the rigor of college. 

Parker Williams, a sophomore at OSU, found his LO AP Calc class to be similar to his college courses.  “Even though online class was challenging for my learning, I still got an A+ in Integral Calc, considerably higher than the B I ended up with in Calc AB. This is the perfect example of the rigor of LO’s AP classes,”said Williams. “The overall academic rigor at LO encourages most people to study, a very important skill for college. I became thankful for this after seeing both the prior high school brainiacs and then me, just an average student, do well in the same college courses.” 

Another LOHS alumni, Kevin Tsai, a sophomore at UC Irvine found that while he focused on computer science, he appreciated the LOHS English department the most. “I’ve found writing to be a very useful skill for a variety of applications, not just limited to academic courses. Internships, club applications, personal portfolio websites and pretty much everything you get involved with has some sort of writing.” The high praise of the English department may seem strange from a STEM major, but the full packaging of LOHS’ multiple departments has proven to be valuable no matter the major.

Another journey of college is leaving home, moving to another city and/or state, as well as learning to live by yourself. Siri Breckenridge, a senior attending Loyola Marymount University said she is enjoying college life more than high school. “It’s such a nice change to be able to be independent and to be able to see how much you grow up while you’re there,” said Breckenridge. “One of my biggest surprises was how much free time I had. I was super busy in high school with dance team, work and homework that I didn’t have time to try new things.” The freedom in college also involves being able to control your own schedule. “While in high school you are required to be in the classroom for 7 hours a day, in college the majority of time you will spend outside of school, studying or doing other activities. It’s a lot of fun and the freedom is very rewarding” explained Tsai. 

While your high school career may help determine your future college, that does not mean it guarantees you success or guarantees failure. Tsai stated, “My advice is to not let your high school performance affect how you think you’ll perform in college. Just because you had a 4.5 in high school doesn’t mean you’ll get a 4, and vice versa. If you get a 2.0 in high school you can still excel in college.”