Sometimes high school just isn't enough

While still a junior in high school, Liz Dempsey found herself deep into college classes in calculus and Chinese, and sitting through seminars on Proust and Joyce.

"At times I was like, 'How could I be doing this?' " recalls the energetic young woman.

But she and 92 peers somehow did do it, successfully leaping from sophomore year of high school straight into freshman year of college. And last month they received diplomas certifying their unusual achievement.

They are the members of the first graduating class of the Bard High School Early College in New York City. Most are 18 but already leaving high school with two years of college and associate in arts degrees under their belts.

Despite the fact that they barely qualify for driver's licenses in New York City, a number of them will be entering four-year colleges as juniors in the fall.

The strength of this class - in addition to a flood of applications for the fall - are validation of this unusual school, dreamed up by Bard College president Leon Botstein and former New York City schools chancellor Harold Levy.

Dr. Botstein grabbed the NYC Board of Education's attention with his book "Jefferson's Children," where he rails against US high schools as outdated and failing to challenge bright students.

He suggested that many teens are ready for college courses at 16 - the age at which he enrolled in the University of Chicago.

Botstein also has considerable experience with early college through his work with Simon's Rock College in Great Barrington, Mass., the country's only four-year college designed for young students. Chancellor Levy was intrigued by the notion of early college and met Botstein for breakfast to discuss it.

Soon - with a speed truly remarkable for a large urban school district - the Bard High School Early College was born.

It would be a New York City public high school, located in temporary quarters in Brooklyn and later in Manhattan, open to all New York City students. But Bard would collaborate, helping to supply administrators, faculty, and additional funding.

The idea came together so late in the school year in 2001 that in June the new school had a plan but no students. Administrators hoped that, by running ads in local papers and sending postcards to all city homes with high school students, they'd entice a highly motivated group to apply.

They succeeded. Apparently the idea of early college was one that spoke to a varied cross- section of students born in more than 20 different countries and scattered throughout the city.

Andrew Stephens was away on summer vacation when his mother called to tell him she had received one of the postcards.

Andrew had just finished his sophomore year at Flushing High School - one of the city's largest - and was ranked among its top students. But he wasn't satisfied. "I found high school to be an oppressive atmosphere," he says.

The idea of a more challenging course of studies appealed to him - as did the chance to study in a more intimate setting. Despite the fact that the school's Brooklyn locale would require a lengthy commute from Queens, he applied for the opportunity to compress his high school studies into a two-year program that would also include two years of college.

Josemon Raju was actually quite happy at his Staten Island high school when he read about the new school in the paper. Several adults told him not to take a chance on an experiment they thought likely to fail - particularly considering the strong record he'd compiled where he was. "But[Bard High School] offered a challenge," Josemon says. [Editor's note: The original version of this story misspelled the last name of Josemon Raju.]

David Tsang had won a spot at Brooklyn Tech, one of the city's most academically competitive high schools, but after two years he had become restless. At Bard, he says, "They had a message" about the potential for student achievement. "There was no message like that at Brooklyn Tech."

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