High school years fly by so quickly, so should an average high school experience be this short? As a high school student, as I’m picking classes for junior year, I realized that four years isn’t enough to complete all the classes I want to complete to prepare myself for college and be able to take all the electives I want to take while also completing the requirements for graduating high school. But how did the decision to have only four years of high school come about? Some schools believe that additional classes, not including the required periods, like summer school and dual enrollment, are good opportunities for students to take extra classes outside their required courses.
However, this is inefficient because of the many periods students already have to take during school hours. All the homework they receive from each class is already overwhelming; adding additional courses that spare their free time or time that can be utilized to do their homework from other works is a hassle for both the teachers who have to grade the work and the students who have to complete it. 
An article also claims that these high school years are required, but college is not, so it is only four years. But what about the other students who care about college and their education? Many students don’t care about their future and education after high school, but it is unfair to most students who plan to pursue a future in college later on. They can be prepared for college with proper preparation and experience from high school.
Your high school experience is critical to colleges that look at your experience in high school based on your grades and other extracurricular activities that you took in high school, but having a short amount of time of 4 years limits a student’s ability to take more classes to impress colleges with a long list of courses taken in high school which can ultimately decide their future of whether or not they make it into their dream college. Having five years of high school instead of 4 can also help better overall help students feel the expectation of classes they will take in college.
P-TECH, a college in New York, offers six years of high school because they believe the additional two years of high school better prepares students for college and eliminates the requirement of taking the class in college, which can lead to less economic worries of the families paying for tuitions. Although Santiago High School offers college-level classes in dual enrollment, the student is expected to finish the course during a typical school year on top of the classes they are currently taking.
Schools should offer students the ability to take additional years outside of the four required years so that the students who don’t plan on going to college in the future don’t have to be in high school for longer because it wouldn’t benefit them. Still, it would help the students who want to be prepared for college.
