From a real interest in the subject to simply trying to get both a high school and college credit out of the way at once, Austin Community College courses are popular among students for getting that extra boost before heading off to the real world.

Senior Sruthi Keerthipati, who took Government and U.S. History in the summer of 2018 and English last summer at ACC, said that while she originally took the classes to get the credit out of the way, she found that it was something that helped her enjoy the rest of high school in her own way.

“I think it started out as something just to get it over with,” Keerthipati said. “[I realized] I could take these classes over the summer so I could have more space in my schedule in order to take all the classes that interested me in high school and so I didn’t have to sacrifice one class over the other.”

Keerthipati also said that she was able to gain experiences from taking college courses that she wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to do before actually going to college.

“I think it definitely prepared me for what to expect from a college-level course,” Keerthipati said. “I learned how college professors work compared to high school teachers as well as getting to [have] different discussions and a different atmosphere since my peers were not people my age, but rather people older and more experienced than me.”

Junior Rhys Forbes, who is taking his junior year to accomplish these credits at ACC rather than take them as AP classes, took Composition 1 and U.S. History last semester and is taking Composition 2 and Government this semester.

“They have really taught me how college classes work, and with that, they have taught me good study habits and how to tackle course work and lectures,” Forbes said. “The English classes taught me how to properly write a college grade essay, while the history class is entirely lecture-based, so it’s taught me how to take good solid notes on the fly.”

Both liking and disliking the format of the classes, Forbes said he really had to figure out how to navigate how and when he works on an assignment as there are less of them than one may expect. 

“I like them because there is no busywork [as] I have five or six major essays or tests and that’s it,” Forbes said. “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword, to be honest because it makes the class a lot more fun, but also I really have to monitor how I’m preparing these grades [because] if I do too poorly on any of them, my semester could be tanked.”

Another student who struggled with the formatting of the classes is senior Sevilla Setliff, who took English over this last summer. While also learning how to manage her time better, Setliff said that she discovered that she ended up enjoying writing the essays required for the class.

“I didn’t like how few grades went into the grade book [as] it made it stressful and I had to make sure every assignment I did was super quality work,” Setliff said. “What I did like was writing the essays. The works we were given were different than the works I had read in high school and it was really enjoyable to learn new stuff.”

Much like Forbes, Setliff gained a lot from having to work with the pace of the class despite initially not liking it because of the time. She took three-hour classes two to three times a week rather than a seven-hour day.

“I had to learn how to manage my getting my work done in between [classes while also] going to work at the same time,” Setliff said. “Over the summer I actually learned how to study better and started spending a lot of time on coffee shops writing essays. [I] definitely got to experience more of the freedom that I would imagine comes with college.”

For more information on how you can take advantage of ACC resources see the ACC website.

For more information on how to prepare for the future see the CPHS college and career page.