Are High School Students Academically Prepared
for College?
Abstract
In
society today, education of all ages is becoming arguably more challenging and
it often brings up the concern about whether or not students are academically
prepared for these high expectations. After conducting a survey, a researcher
has concluded that a majority of college students feel as if they were not
academically prepared for the superior demands of college courses. While many
argue that taking difficult courses in college benefits students in the long
run (p.2), this study shows that more than 50% of college students disagree with
these seemingly unrealistic commitments. Results from this particular survey
revealed that many students are struggling with the academic jump from high
school to college and over half of these students do not feel academically
prepared.
Introduction
Education is a mandatory aspect of an individual's life from
kindergarten to as late as twelfth grade. After high school graduation, teens
finally obtain the freedom to make decisions about their future facing the
options of going to community college, a four-year university, or straight to
work. This is an overwhelming decision considering that the majority of
millennials are not set on their expectations of the future. Although society
today drills the idea of college into minds of high schoolers, furthering one's
education is easier said than done. According to countless researches done on
the topic, there is a large gap between what a student learns in high school,
and the skills that they will actually need in college. In one finding, Hart
Research Association displays how this lack of skills affects colleges because
professors spend a significant amount of time teaching information that should
have been learned in high school. More importantly is the affect that this
fault has on students; this research provides an example of this academic
uneasiness through a survey conducted to current college students.
Methods
Participants:
Twenty-three male and female students
participated in this survey. Every participant was current enrolled in a four-
year university located in the United States.
Data Sources:
A survey was created on
surveymonkey. It included seven questions regarding how academically prepared
high school students are for college courses. Four of these questions were multiple
choice, two of them were yes or no questions, and one was an open response
question.
Procedure:
The researcher posted
this survey on a blog for her peers in class to respond to. The researcher also
posted this survey on Facebook in order to obtain responses from students at
universities other than the University of Iowa.
Data Analysis:
The researcher analyzed
the data and created graphs in order to display the results to the audience.
Results
In Table 1, students were asked a multiple choice question
regarding whether or not they felt that high school courses were challenging
enough to prepare them for college courses. A majority of the participants were
opposed to this statement, resulting in 66.53 against it, and 36.67 for it.
While there are answers from both sides of the spectrum, it is obvious that students
do not think previous learning made them competent enough for college-level
learning.
Table 1: High School Courses were difficult enough to academically
prepare me for college. 
In Table 2, the researcher introduced a question about the effort
that students put towards their grades in college. 96.67% of participants
claimed that they have to work a remarkable amount harder in college in order
to receive sufficient grades than they ever had to in high school.
Table 2: I
have to work a significant amount harder in college than I did in high school
in order to achieve sufficient grades.
Table 3 refers to whether or not students felt academically
prepared for college after high school. 50% of participants agreed to this
statement, while the other 50% did not. Half of the students realized that they
did not feel prepared for college before they even enrolled in classes.
According to the research, it seems as if the confidence of the other half soon
dropped after beginning college course.
Table 3: At the end of
high school, I felt prepared to take on the difficulty of college.
Discussion
The results of this survey conclude that a majority of students do
not feel as if high school learning prepared them for college courses. Hart
explains that this uneasiness also creates problems in the school system. When
taking both of these researches that include numerous people with different
backgrounds, it is obvious that high schools across the nation are doing a poor
job of preparing their students. Although 50% of students felt academically
prepared for college after graduation high school, it appeared that many
changed their minds after actually experiencing a college course. 66.53% of
students felt as if high school courses were not difficult enough in order to
succeed in a college course. As a result of the difficulty level increasing,
96.67% of students claim that they have to try remarkably harder in their
classes in order to receive sufficient grades when compared to high school
courses.
College students were chosen to participate in
this survey because they have graduated high school and they are currently
enrolled in college courses. Although many were confident in their academic
abilities after leaving high school, many gained a new perspective after
enrolling in college. When asked what they would have done differently in high
school in this survey, many claimed that they would have taken harder courses;
however, lack of overall skills, study habits, and lectures were mentioned. A
majority of these issues are completely controlled by the structure of high
school overall, and could be improved with reevaluation.
