I Don’t Even Have A High School Diploma; How Can I Still Go To College?

by Rachel Conway

GED program

Sometimes things happen in your life that throw you off track, or maybe you never found the right track to begin with. This happens all the time to all types of people in the United States. People from all backgrounds may one day find themselves at a point where they don’t know what to do or where to go next. Getting an education is the key to your future and no matter what happened in your past, if you want to transform your life then community college is the place to start.

So maybe high school wasn’t your thing, but if you still want to go to a university, a bad high school experience should not stop you. Maybe you couldn’t go to college right away, or maybe you dropped out after your first year and you’d do anything to go back.

A community college degree is your ticket to moving forward. Once you enroll in community college, you can start your education fresh: new GPA, new school, new friends, new classes and a real chance to discover all of the opportunities that you never knew were waiting for you. You can finally learn about subjects that actually interest you, take classes with teachers who want you to succeed, explore new topics, and learn the right skills that can change your life. Here I’ll address a few of the things you might be uncertain about before jumping into a new education.

Community College GED Programs

Most community colleges offer a GED program for people who never graduated from high school. There, you can take both the classes and the test for the GED. You will be guided on how to do well on the exam, and you will have places to go for help or support, such as free tutoring and centers for English and math help. You can even take GED prep seminars to improve your skills in math, reading and writing.

Most GED exams have a fee, but depending on your school it might be possible to have it waived. Some community colleges even allow you to use your GED classes as credits towards your Associates degree!

Community College Night Classes

After realizing that not all community college students can commit full days to studying, most community colleges have a wide variety of classes available at night and on weekends. Community colleges make it possible to continue your full time job and restart your education at the same time. As long as you can take all of the required classes, it’s possible to earn your degree without taking time off from your job. While you’re working towards your new degree, you can keep earning the money you need for living.

Once you have your degree, it doesn’t make a difference what time your classes were, or how many credits you took each semester. It doesn’t even matter if it took 3 years for you to graduate because once you have the degree in your hand, nobody can take it away from you.

Moving Forward

By working hard in community college, regular 4-year colleges will take notice of your recent achievements and they won’t pay attention to your past experiences. Maybe today you might not be able to picture yourself studying at a 4-year college, or one day telling your family that you earned a Bachelors Degree, but community college can change that. In community college you can build the confidence you need to succeed in the world and transfer to a major university. Even Ivy League universities and the best colleges in America accept transfer students who didn’t do well in high school or got low SAT scores.

Your performance and the effort you put in at community college is all the admissions will look at when you apply. For more info on how to get the most out of your community college education, check out this community college guide. If you’re still not sure if you’ll get in, apply anyway. Universities are waiting for students like you to realize that they have the potential to get the best education out there. Once you graduate from community college you have nothing to lose by applying to a university. There are hundreds of colleges in America, and many of them might just be waiting to accept a student like you.

Photo Credit

This post was written by Rachel Conway

Rachel Conway is a staff editor at CCTS. She transferred from community college to Cornell University and enjoys helping students with this community college guide.

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