Four years and a test determine where students land in the post-high school world, but a staggering and resilient question is whether those four years and the SAT/ACT truly do prepare students for college or not?

Though many current in-school students will say no, most researchers will provide many explanations of different ways that it actually does.

When it comes to social development, high school prepares students in the sense that they begin to discover themselves and feel comfortable with who they are. This developed confidence will help many students approach new people and begin to lace together friendships so that they feel much more at home and fit in their environment. Student-student bonds are essential during schooling and that goes for college as well. Even a student-teacher bond which is very common in high school can still happen in college as long as students engage their social skills.

High school has those “uh-oh” moments where the student is falling behind and feels he or she will never catch up. Though it is a stress-inducing experience, in the end it pays off much more than many people would expect. As much as students would like to hear that heavy workloads end after high school, they will not. The amount of work will only increase, but students who were exposed to this experience in high school will be ultra-prepared for similar workloads and will maneuver through the stress with ease.

The largest point that can be made in order to defend high school is that the classes prepare students for the difficulty of college-level classes. This especially applies to those students who are involved in honors classes which will prepare students for difficult classes. Also, AP courses provide the opportunity to earn college credit and allow them to bypass certain classes once they graduate high school.

Once college begins, students will find that the course difficulty has skyrocketed, but due to changing curriculums and evolving academic resources in high schools, students will be ready to tackle these difficult classes. This is solely because they have spent the last four years of their lives in training and preparation for an evolving system and difficult work.

High school has its problems, but in the end, it is the single best way to ready students for college and beyond, as the skills learned aren’t hollow skills, but life skills.