Junior Jatin Gourishetty said he has aspirations of being a Navy SEAL, and since he wants to do so as soon as possible, early graduation is the route he’s taking to accomplish his goal. Gourishetty said he aims to complete high school early and join the military so he can contribute to society as much as possible.

“At the end of my life, I want to look back at myself and think, ‘I accomplished a lot, and did a lot for society and wasn’t selfish,’” Gourishetty said. 

Although under 3% of high school students choose to graduate early, Gourishetty is a part of the growing number of students with early graduation plans. According to USA Today, early graduation programs are gaining traction around the country.

Even so, Melinda Stephan, counselor and career programming and resources coordinator, said Gourishetty’s plan to graduate a full year early was almost unique, and it was much more common for seniors to graduate a semester early as an alternative.

“Students graduating mid-year of senior year (are) more common than students graduating at the end of junior year,” Stephan said via email. “Each year we might have two to four students graduating at the end of their junior year, but we’ll have 30+ seniors graduating mid-year most years.”

Senior Alexis “Lexi” Peterson is among the demographic mentioned by Stephan, and she said she made the choice to graduate early because she didn’t feel as though school was a good fit for her.

“I just feel like high school isn’t my thing,” Peterson said. “There’s a lot of people here and you really have to know exactly what you want to do to fit in with a group, like choir, or radio… and I just didn’t really pick anything. (It’s) not that I feel I don’t belong, (but high school is) just a lot. All the time.”

Although Peterson said she had a difficult time during high school, she also said coordinating her early graduation was a relatively easy experience, and the main thing she had to focus on was ensuring she had enough credits to graduate.

Gourishetty said he agreed with Peterson, and said that he had to express his dream of being in the military to his counselor in order to get her on board with his plan.

“To graduate early, I pretty much just went up to my counselor and asked her if I could graduate early,” Gourishetty said. “I guess they aren’t too happy about kids graduating early if they don’t have a plan, so she asked me if I have a detailed plan of my future, so I explained to her all my aspirations for the military, and she seemed pretty convinced.”

Stephan said both Gourishetty and Peterson’s plans after high school were common among early graduates.

“Some specific examples (of reasons why students might want to graduate early) might include: starting college early, entering the military, entering a training program or working full-time…and often the student feels ready for a change of scenery and opportunity,” she said. “Usually the common denominator is that the student is ready to move beyond high school and take the next step, and they don’t wish to delay those next steps.”

Stephan said early graduation was a good option for some students, but her main emphasis was to make sure these students have a plan.

“Early graduation can be a good option for students for many reasons,” Stephan said. “Students are ready to move forward with further education, students have very specific plans where early graduation would benefit their pursuit of those plans, and more. The reasons are all really individual, but our counselors always work to make sure that the student has thought things through and has a plan for once they graduate.”