High School Stories
Every summer, high school students are welcome in most UC Santa Cruz Summer Session courses. They get a taste of college life and earn UC credit they can take with them anywhere.
We hope you find some inspiration in their stories.
2022 High School Summer Online
Course:
ENVS 18-01 - Natural History Illustration (5 credits)As an incoming senior with college applications looming in my future, I wanted to spend my summer learning something new and increasing my artistic skills. I also wanted to create new artworks for my portfolio, as I’m planning on applying to an art or graphic design major. During the UCSC summer program, I enrolled in the Natural History Illustration course. I was extremely excited to expand my artistic knowledge and try to combine it with environmental science.
The class I enrolled in was virtual, but the professor was very friendly and replied to my follow up emails with helpful suggestions. She was thorough in her grading and I felt confident that I was doing my best work for her class. In addition, after participating in the high school summer program, I felt more prepared for college applications and furthering my education in college. I have taken a couple of college summer classes throughout my high school life. The courses through UC Santa Cruz were the best fit for what I was looking for. They were exactly what I needed to expand my skills and portfolio. I highly recommend the program for anyone interested in joining a university class over the summer.
2022 & 2021 High School Summer Online
Course:
COWL 52 -CRSN 15A - STEM Essentials (2 credits)I have been positively impacted by my online classes with UCSC both this summer and last summer. Being able to get a window into the lives and classes of college students at such a prestigious university is invaluable; I have a much better window through which to view college as a whole. After these classes, I feel much more comfortable with the thought of college and it has eased much of my worries about the difficulties of classes as these summer courses provide an incredible bridge from High School to College. I have learned some invaluable skills through these summer courses: in my intro, to business class, I learned incredibly important soft skills such as doing math and basic statistics on google sheets. In my STEM essentials class, I learned some excellent points on plagiarism that I had never learned in my high school and are incredibly important for individual research, particularly in STEM.
2022 High School Summer University - Commuter
Course:
AM 10 - Mathematical Methods for Engineers I (5 credits)The most powerful lesson I learned as part of my high school summer experience at UCSC was the extensiveness of knowledge available to me through higher education. The Mathematical Methods for Engineers class opened my eyes to the diversity of mathematics, and I was able to use processes and notation I had only caught glimpses of in my high school math classes. The class completely amplified my curiosity because everything seemed new, and I was able to apply my knowledge to fun real-world situations such as balancing chemical equations and circuitry, as well as experience a college classroom environment. I was able to confirm that engineering is the right field for me to go into as I apply to colleges, and also that I am incredibly passionate about math and its systems. I hope to combine these fields in my future education by continuing to take math classes of increasing complexity and share my knowledge and studying process with others. Overall, my UCSC summer course inspired me and reassured me of my love for STEM preceding a stressful college application season.
2022 High School Summer University
Courses:
OCEA 80A - Life in the Sea (5 credits)
PSYC 20 - Cognition: Fundamental Theories (5 credits)My time at UCSC was one of the best summer experiences I’ve had. I loved the entirety of the program while on campus, which prompted me to spend more time and effort into being involved with the events and others in the session. I understand that being passionate about something drives you to want to learn more about it, as you tend to care more to remember and discuss it.
2022 High School Summer Online
Course:
COWL 52 - Personal Finance and Investing (5 credits)I really enjoyed the program and was able to learn and preview what college is all about. Listening to college lectures was very interesting and allowed me to see what I need to work on and what I was strong at. I also enjoyed the smaller group sessions with my TA that allowed me to work hands on with a instructor. The whole experience was amazing! Any high school student should take classes in the summer program it truly was awesome. The fact that I was able to work online at my own pace while maintaining a job was also a plus. This allowed me to start my first job and study. The summer session was only 5 weeks and was exactly what I needed to jump start my college experience.
2022 High School Summer University - Commuter
Course:
ART 164A - Screenprinting (5 credits)I experienced the program commuting from my father’s apartment. I think that my experience could help perspective commuting high school students to understand the benefits of taking UCSC courses, and the great opportunity that they have locally to get a head start on their college credits. Many high schoolers that I know often take classes at Cabrillo to receive credits, but those courses are long and the student may only receive 2-3 credits after months of work. This class may be more costly, but it is a great program for those like myself who are very busy during the school year, and prefer to have a more academically rigorous course packed into a shorter amount of time, rather than a longer more mellow program.
2022 High School Summer University
Courses:
ART 20K - Introduction to New Media and Digital Artmaking (5 credits)
ECON 1 - Introductory Microeconomics: Resource Allocation and Market Structure (5 credits)
LGST 10 - Introduction to Legal Process (5 credits)The most powerful lesson I learned as part of my school summer experience is that success requires both education and motivation. A fundamental difference between this summer school experience and regular school is the chance to choose all your classes. With this freedom, I was both elated and torn. The vast array of classes pushed me to find a passion and the motivation to invest time into whatever I wished. I learned that effort and motivation to learn about a subject are required to do well. Ultimately, the classes I chose were an introduction to legal process, microeconomics, and digital art. Most of the course load is keeping up with the readings and homework. I enjoyed the legal process assignments most and watched time fly. Half the battle is learning the material. The other half is finding the drive to learn. I am grateful to have the opportunity to attend this experience.
2022 High School Summer Online
Course:
LGST 128I - Race and Law (5 credits)The most powerful lesson I learned through my summer school experience was the true value of education. Initially when I had enrolled in the course, I was not even aware that the class would have people much older than me as I was expecting mostly high school students. However, on my first day of class I found that I was the only high school student in the class. I met classmates who had full time jobs and were raising their own children, yet still made time in their lives to finish their education. I had teammates who began working before I was even born and had left their attendance at UCSC over 40 years ago for personal reasons. I found it so admirable that people with completely filled lives as adults were coming back to school for the pure sake of being educated. Though we come from such different lives, we were all connected by one passion for learning about history and law. I barely felt the age difference as we all just became students eager to learn.
2022 High School Summer Online
Course:
ART 20K - Introduction to New Media and Digital Artmaking (5 credits)As a high school student based in Hong Kong, I entered the Art 20K course with no prior experience with the standards and expectations of an American university-style environment, but left with a much stronger grasp of the pace and attention demanded by a course of this level. While the asynchronous aspect of the online summer course granted me the freedom to self-organize, I needed to very quickly learn the ways in which I could use my own time to its fullest. I ultimately decided that in order to keep up with my fellow classmates, I needed to both efficiently consume and produce content, but also strike a balance between coursework and my other ongoing commitments. Surprisingly, despite the differences in time zones between myself and my fellow classmates, I felt that our discussions were very fruitful and inspiring. I found myself thoroughly enjoying listening to the diverse perspectives offered by all of my classmates (which included college students and even a visual arts teacher). By the end of the summer school experience, I found myself more comfortable with the pace and rhythm of university-level work — now able to find a better work-life balance while maintaining performance in a relatively fast paced course.
Mira Pinto
Andrew Shyffer
Marion Fowler
Uma Sharma
Anthony Absi
June Aarsen
Anjali Biju
Chloe Xiao
Nicolas Wong
