USA School/College Intro

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Last Updated: Wednesday, 26 July 2023 15:02
Published: Wednesday, 26 July 2023 15:02
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USA Schools / Colleges:

Schools:

In USA, there are public schools funded by State Governments, which provide high quality education. Unlike 3rd world countries where private schools are all the rage, here in USA you will see very few kids going to private school (mostly kids of wealthy families).

We have grades in USA schools. They are NOT called classes as in India. So, a student in matriculation (India 10th class) would be referred to being in "10th grade". Classes refer to different section (In India, it's section A, section B, etc) within that grade. So, when we say "what class are you?", it means within your grade, what section are you in? They don't have Sections as "Section A", etc here. This is because in middle and high schools, there are very few core courses. Beyond those core courses, you are free to take any course as per your liking. So, you change classes every hour and sit with totally new set of kids in almost each class. So, you don't really have a definite assigned "class" where you sit all day. Elementary schools is different as there are no electives there, so you do have an "assigned class". These classes are usually known by the name of the teacher who is teaching this class (i.e "Miss Elizabeth Class").

In public schools, education starts from Kindergarten (aka KG in Indian schools), goes to 1st grade (NOT called class as in India but grade), and then progresses to 12th grade (equivalent of 10+2 in India). Public schools are divided in 3 separate campuse to catr to kids of different ages. The youngest kids from Kindergarten - 5th grade go to Elementary school, from 6th - 8th grade go to Middle school and from 9th - 12th grade go to High School. The division is not very strict, and different school district may choose their own criteria (i.e middle school may go from 7th - 9th grade).

In section "USA Basic Facts", we saw that there are about 55M students in USA Schools. These are the age group composition:

  • < 5 years: 6M kids in this age group go to some form of Preschool. They are not counted as students, as formal education starts from age 5+ thru Kindergarten class.
  • 5-17 yrs: All 55M kids in this age group are attending some form of school (50M in public and 5M in private). 38M are in elementary/middle school, while 16M are in high school.
  • 18-24 yrs: Out of 30M people in this age group, 1.5M are still enrolled in high school. This makes sense as Kindergarten starts from age 5, and adding 13 yrs of school education, takes it to 18 yrs of age. Kids who start b/w 5-6 yrs of age are the ones who are in High school even when they cross 18.

From above data, we may deduce that about 4M students graduate from High School every year (16M/4 years of high school = 4M).

Colleges:

In USA, there is no dearth of colleges to go to, as long as you can afford it. There are 2 year and 4 year colleges.