College Acceptance
Ever since the Youth Initiative High School was founded in 1996, the school has frequently received questions and expressions of concern about the ability of its graduates to attend college. During this time, YIHS has steadily built itself a reputation for academic seriousness and educational innovation in the local community. Still, many prospective students and their parents have worried about how the school's unusual curriculum and student evaluation system might affect graduates chances of being accepted to respectable colleges and universities, especially within the public University of Wisconsin system. Would the absence of conventional letter grades on the YIHS transcript cause problems with college admissions committees? Would YIHS grads be hurt by their unfamiliarity with standardized tests like the SAT and ACT? Would a YIHS transcript be just too strange for big university bureaucracies to handle? Now that the school has accumulated a number of years of experience and has an enrollment nearing 50 students, the time seems right to answer these questions definitively.
In the spring of 2004, the Youth Initiative High School graduated its eighth class of seniors, bringing the number of YIHS alumni up to a total of 40. The experiences of these 40 graduates suggest that students educated at Youth Initiative stand, if anything, a significantly better chance of attending a college or university than do students graduating from other schools in the Viroqua area or in the state of Wisconsin. Of the 40 YIHS alums, 25, or about 63%, have gone on to attend a four-year college or university, while 10% (four graduates) have attended a technical college or vocational program. The 27 students who graduated in the years 2001-2004 have done even better on average, with 19, or about 68%, going on to college or university.
To put these numbers into some context, it is interesting to compare them with those published by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for seniors in public high schools in the state. Although neither DPI nor local school districts keep track of what graduates actually do after high school, the state does survey members of each senior class about their post-graduation plans. While this data is obviously not ideal for comparison with that from YIHS, it does provide some basis for comparison. According to DPI records from the years 2000-2003, an average of 48% of Wisconsin high school seniors planned to attend a college or university. Locally, 42% of seniors attending Viroqua High School during these years planned to go to college, with similar percentages holding true for public schools throughout the area in which YIHS students live. Assuming, then, that most public school seniors who plan to go to college actually go on to do so and keeping in mind the small sample size represented by YIHS graduating classes, we can conclude that roughly 20-30% more YIHS alumni attend college or university than do their contemporaries in the public system.
Perhaps the only thing that this shaky statistical analysis proves is that there is no basis to the claim that YIHS graduates suffer from a disadvantage when it comes to being accepted to college. A look at the list of different colleges and universities actually attended by YIHS alumni, on the other hand, suggests some idea of the depth of the Youth Initiative academic program and of the diversity of the YIHS student body. The 25 alums who have gone on to college have attended institutions of every type and size, from large public state universities to small private liberal arts colleges to professional schools of technology and design. YIHS graduates have gone to off to college in schools around Wisconsin and the Midwest, as well as to colleges located elsewhere in the USA and even abroad.
The recently graduated YIHS Class of 2004 provides an excellent case-in-point. Of the nine graduates this spring, six are attending college this fall. Two are attending schools in the public University of Wisconsin system, UW-Madison and UW-Superior. Another two are attending private Wisconsin liberal arts colleges, Ripon College and Northland College, both of which have accepted other YIHS grads in the past. Finally, two members of the Class of 2004 will be attending public or private colleges in Washington state. Thus, it seems clear that YIHS can serve as an excellent stepping-stone to college, university, or any other kind of post-graduation adventure its students can dream up.
A Partial Listing of Colleges and Universities Attended by YIHS Graduates:
American University in Bulgaria
Augsburg College
Bard College
College of the Atlantic
Colorado Mountain College
Deep Springs College
Eugene Lang College
Evergreen State College
Fairhaven College
Grinnell College
Lawrence University
Luther College
Milwaukee School of Engineering
Naropa University
Northland College
Peninsula College
Ripon College
St. Francis Xavier University
Shimer College
University of Chicago
University of St. Andrews
University of Wisconsin - Madison
University of Wisconsin - Richland Center
University of Wisconsin - Superior
Warren Wilson College
Wartburg College
West Midlands Eurythmy School
Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria
Minneapolis, MN
Annandale-on-Hudson, NY
Bar Harbor, ME
Glenwood Springs, CO
Deep Springs, CA
Greenwich Village, NY
Olympia, WA
Bellingham, WA
Grinnell, IA
Appleton, WI
Decorah, IA
Milwaukee, WI
Boulder, CO
Ashland, WI
Port Angeles, WA
Ripon, WI
Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada
Waukegan, IL
Chicago, IL
St Andrews, Scotland, UK
Madison, WI
Richland Center, WI
Superior, WI
Asheville, NC
Waverly, IA
Stourbridge, England
Average Rates of Planned or Actual College Attendance:
| Senior Classes | College/University | Technical/Vocational | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Planned | Wisconsin | 2000 - 2003 | 48.2% | 21.3% |
| Planned | Viroqua High School | 2000 - 2003 | 42% | 19.5% |
| Planned | Nine Local Public HSs* | 2000 - 2003 | 41.7% | 23.8 |
| Actual | YIHS | 1997 - 2004 | 62.5% | 10% |
| Actual | YIHS | 2001 - 2004 | 67.7% | 7.3% |
* Includes De Soto, Hillsboro, Kickapoo, La Crosse, La Farge, North Crawford, Richland, Viroqua and Westby.
Or for those of us more visual people:
* Includes De Soto, Hillsboro, Kickapoo, La Crosse, La Farge, North Crawford, Richland, Viroqua and Westby.