The Gap: High School's Role in College Readiness (English 1301)

This essay, written by Heidi Gutierrez for English 1301, explores the critical issue of high school preparedness for college. The author argues that high schools are failing to adequately equip students with essential skills like studying, memorization, and time management, leading to difficulties in higher education. The essay highlights lenient grading policies, the impact of technology and social media, and a lack of emphasis on core curriculum as contributing factors. Gutierrez draws on personal experiences, references various studies and research to support the argument, and suggests implementing a freshman program in high schools and colleges to address the identified gaps. The essay underscores the need for a more rigorous and supportive high school environment to ensure students' success in college, emphasizing the importance of time management, academic skills, and the responsible use of technology.

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Heidi Gutierrez
Mr. Baldemar Perez
English 1301
12/27/2019
High School Students Not Ready For College
High schools aren’t properly preparing students for the “college experience.” If you
analyze students entering college they are lacking the skills necessary to be successful. Skills
such as studying, memorization, and test taking abilities are not being properly taught to
students.
The primary purpose of high school is to get pupils into college. The courses taught in
high schools are too lenient in their grading policies and offer students much leeway. An
example of this this lenience is that of late acceptance of papers from teachers. Of course late
papers are marked down, but this policy voids the purpose of having deadlines. At the high
school I attended, I turned in papers a week late and still received a grade of at least seventy
percent. This is coming back to hurt me now because I don’t respect deadlines. Although I do not
like to admit it, if high school had been stricter, this would not be a current problem in my
college career. Most universities, both public and private, set strict guidelines on these matters
and openly encourage their professors to do the same.
Most public high school teachers are underpaid and overworked. They endure class size
of over forty students in a single classroom. As a result of teacher’s stress they have less one on
one interaction. The lack of individual and private interaction between professors results in
students who end up paying the price of an inadequate and inefficient public high school

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education. Without these types of classes in high school, it is asking for failure in the students’
collegiate career.
High school courses lack encouraging class discussion that is an important aspect of the
college classroom, that is, as far as I have experienced. School districts do not offer the financial
support to students to receive for college. Students do not get the correct advice, go out instead
of studying and doing homework, and let their first semester go failing. Give up and owe school
and students loans.
In California, research from a specific college board reflected that even students with
advanced classes in the high school were not ready to experience the elevating challenges of the
higher education (Santelises 2016). Around, one-quarter students were found to be opting for non-
credit remedial courses during initiation of the college days, which demonstrates their anxiety
and unpreparedness.
The students are witnessed to be lacking various skills specifically English literature and
Mathematics, which depicts the feeble base in the high school courses, curriculum, activities and
preparedness (Kanno 2018). The leniency in the high school results in the irrational confidence of
independence and good performance (Bailey and Smith Jaggars 2016). The push experienced from
the current administration system in graduating as many students as possible, has resulted in the
lack of focus, time management skills and significance of dedication towards a specific project
amongst the high school graduates (Foote 2016).
The leniency in finishing a complete core curriculum syllabus can be considered one of
the reasons for the unpreparedness of the students. According to American College Testing
records, graduates accommodated with the core curriculum experiences reflects more readiness

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(Sprague 2017). Another reason for the unpreparedness of a wide rate of students can be the lack
of balanced distribution of attention on the above average students (Kurlaender et al. 2016).
Students with poor performances surely deserves more attention and resources in comparison to
the good performers, but the assumption about the good performers that do not need resources or
courses for incorporating college preparedness is completely false.
These reasons are valid as I myself have faced various challenges in preparing for the
higher education. Another prevalent reason impacting the rate of readiness amongst the high
school students for the college education system is the influence of technology and social media
over the our generation. Although, social media is beneficial for the aspect of networking but can
arrest a lot of my time in a day without my notice. Moreover, the ease of acquiring information
through the internet can disrupt the habit of navigation through an actual college library. The
auto-spell checks features in every technological device I use have resulted in the unconscious
spelling errors in my important assignments.
Therefore, it can be concluded from the paper that the causes, reasons and symptoms of
unpreparedness of the high school students for college can be addressed by incorporating a
special freshman program of educating about the college life and educational system in the last
year of high school and in the induction programs of the colleges.

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References:
Bailey, T. and Smith Jaggars, S., 2016. When college students start behind.
Foote, C., 2016. Building Success beyond High School with Career-and College-Ready Literacies.
Knowledge Quest, 44(5), pp.56-60.
Kanno, Y., 2018. Non-college-bound English learners as the underserved third: How students graduate
from high school without being college-or career-ready. Journal of Education for Students Placed at Risk.
Kurlaender, M., Jackson, J., Grodsky, E. and Howell, J., 2016. Ready or not? California’s Early Assessment
Program and the transition to college. In meeting of American Educational Research Association,
Washington, DC.
Santelises, S.B., 2016. Are High Schools Preparing Students to Be College-and Career-Ready?. Tech
Directions, 76(1), p.26.
Sprague, J., 2017. Ready or Not: Engaging Student Voices in a Study of College Preparation. Lifescaping
Project, p.187.