I live in the US and have both a High School Diploma and a BS, both of them from accredited institutions (i.e., they are considered valid anywhere in the US and possibly the world).
I pulled off a B average in High School, so many years ago (I think my GPA was around 3.1 or something). I got in to college (not the best school, but a good, respectable one that you can’t really be ashamed of).
I have a morbid temptation to redo my high school years. With all the knowledge I’ve learned in college and in the real world, and all the practical wisdom regarding time management and study skills that I’ve picked up, I think that, if I could do it over again, I could blow it away and be valedictorian and get a scholarship for MIT.
I know that I could, if I wanted, do another Bachelor’s degree and hang a BA in English next to my BS in Computer Science if I put in 2 years or so.
But is there any way to redo high school? Could I rationally gain admittance to a Private School, like one of those old-fashioned “Harry Potter-esque”, “good evening, guvnah” style boarding schools? I checked my state’s GED program, and one of the prerequisites for taking the test is that you have to establish to the satisfaction of the state that you didn’t finish high school, so I’m out on that. Are there alternate High School equivalency programs?
Note: I’m not actually planning to do this - it is a morbid fascination.
I’m pretty sure there is an age cutoff. Even if you didn’t have a HS diploma, they can’t have 40-year-old guys hanging around a bunch of teenagers.
There was an article in the New Yorker a few years ago about a French guy who looked really young and would enroll in US high schools under false names and ages. He always got caught (so it was clearly against the rules).
I have a related question - could I go back and finish?
I’m 34, and often have dreams that I’m back at high school, studying or whatever, when I realize that I’m TOO OLD. Probably not an uncommon dream, and they don’t bother me, but I’ve always wondered.
I have a GED, so I’m sure they would reject me on those grounds, but if I didn’t, could I go back and finish?
My high school had an upper age limit of 21 or 22, something like that. Otherwise, the pervy types would just keep failing over and over again and using school as a free way to meet hot freshmen. The mindset is that if you didn’t finish school by then, you were never going to anyway.
Not to mention, it wouldn’t be fair to the kids if you came into class with all this life experience, an appreciation for study skills, and knowledge of life as an adult without a diploma, and stole away the valedictorian title and MIT scholarship.
Maybe you could start your own “nontraditional high school” for adults (don’t ask me how you’d get the diplomas accredited). But I can’t imagine government funding being provided for that kind of endeavor.
A few years back, our local school board allowed a 30 something woman to attend high school classes for the three years she needed to graduate. I suppose they thought it was safe in her case since she was highly unattractive and had a child in high school with her. (They graduated the same year.)I thought it was a horrible precedent, but I had no ifluence with the school board.
The oddest thing, to me, was the woman acted just as immature (or just as mature) as her classmates. Odd to see in a woman in her late 30’s.
my local school district has night school, or did at least for a while, for older folks who wanted to finish or redo high school, you could take 4 classes per semester and eventually graduate with a genuine diploma instead of a ged
I don’t think that having these skills, and going to high school at an advanced age would be ‘stealing’…These are things that HS valedictorians already have. Just because somebody had to learn it later than somebody in high school doesn’t make them a thief.
I thought adult ed. was pretty common. That’s how my mother and her best friend finally got their high school diploma. My own high-school had an adult program as well. Neither of these was mixed with the traditional students, though.
You might want to check out the story of Jerri Blank, a boozer,a user, and a three time loser, who returns to high school to get a fresh start at 46. She didn’t have a diploma but it is still a feel-good story.
While this isn’t really the same thing, let me note the cases of Lyn Tornabene and Cameron Crowe:
Each of them, years after they had graduated from high school, went back to high school for a year pretending to be much younger. They each did it because they wanted to write a book about the experience.
There is an age limit of 19 in the fall. Older than that and you go to adult education, a separate building. It can give you a GED or even your diploma within 6 months of your failed graduation.
I just can’t imagine why someone would want to do this, especially after having already received a BS in college.
Wouldn’t it be nice to go back to 8th grade and enter that science fair again? I bet with my training in bioinformatics I could blow all those kids science projects out of the water.
I literally have nightmares about this scenario a couple times a year. I’ll be back in school, taking classes, and then realize I’ve already taken the class, except now I’ve forgotten that the big paper is due today and there’s a class I was supposed to take that I’ve never attended, and so on.
I have dreams where I have to go back to high school, too. I’m always very relieved to wake up and realize that they were just dreams. Please tell me an adult can’t be forced to go back to high school for any reason.
If you’re asking about the jurisdiction that sets ed code then it’s obviously the state. (And obviously it’s the local school district that implements it.) And this particular code is probably the same throughout all the states. I’ve never heard of any state that let’s anyone over 19 enroll in K-12 without some kind of very unusual exception (i.e., mental disability, etc.). People who haven’t finished high school by age 19 go to adult ed/continuing ed programs, or whatever local term they have for it. (Sometimes it’s a division of K-12, and sometimes it’s part of a community college system.)
It seems even less likely for someone who’s already finished high school to do this. Public schools are mandated for very different reasons from things like public parks, which are provided for recreational purposes.
I can tell you one thing. During the summer between my junior and senior years in high school, I took a scholarship to summer school at a university 4 hours away from home. Lived on campus in the dorms with a bunch of other 16-17 year old high school students. Finished my summer credits (got a head start on my classmates!) and then went back to high school to finish my senior year.
It was horrible.
For one thing, the rules are very restrictive. You’ve been an adult for a while now and are probably out of the habit of asking the authority in the room if you can go to the bathroom. If you are one minute late to class, you wouldn’t sweat it much, but the teacher might sweat you. You’ve been on your own, independent, and able to make decisions for yourself for a long time in regard to how you manage your time and schedule and decisions. You’ve probably forgotten how controlled all that stuff is in high school. It is really really really difficult to go from being treated like a responsible, discerning adult and then put yourself back in that “obedient to authority” mode. My senior year, I’d forget to ask for a hall pass. I’d just get up and go wherever I wanted to go. And got in trouble for it all the time. It pissed me off that I’d already been trusted with the responsibility of meeting my academic obligations but I still had to have my hand held by the high school teachers. It’s rage-inducing. (At least it was when I was 17. I was a walking attitude problem.)
The other thing is the material is boring. It’s all very slowly spoon fed to you. I barely remember cracking a book in high school at all. After my college summer school experience (in which I’d taken Freshman Comp), my high school senior-level composition class was like going back to kindergarden. My teacher knew I’d gotten an A in the college-level class, so he ignored me when I flat out fell asleep in his class. He once woke me to answer a grammar question – he knew I knew the answer and nobody else in the class did, so he apologized for waking me and then asked me to explain the finer point of grammar he was explaining. We had a talk about it at the beginning of the semester and he let me know he understood the position I was in, but the class was required for graduation, so I had to sit through it. I phoned it in and still pulled an A.
If you could stand the oppressive and often arbitrary rule-making, and you could handle the boredom, and you could be bothered with all the standardized test bubble filling in, you could probably rock a 4.0 blindfolded with your hands tied behind your back.
I say try one of those online high school programs (both my sister’s kids got their diplomas this way). That way you could skip the standardized assessments, arbitrary rules, and you can whip through the material at a pace that might not be quite as boring.
My stepson is taking on-line high school courses to get his diploma. He just turned twenty, and if he had not been already enrolled in the last few classes that he has to take, would have had to give up the online deal and go attend adult education classes for a GED.
We had a talk about it at the beginning of the semester and he let me know he understood the position I was in, but the class was required for graduation, so I had to sit through it. I phoned it in and still pulled an A.