Graduating early is something many students say they would love to do, but only a few actually go through with it.

Finishing high school in three years instead of four may sound nice, but it presents a series of additional hurdles that some students do not realize.

College and Career Counselor Sarah Simmons said she typically discourages students who say they want to graduate early, for very specific reasons.

“This comes from personal experience, as someone who graduated early myself, and also from personal experience here in the CCC; I can honestly say that maybe 1 out of 10 students that I’ve worked with has been successful,” Simmons said. “I had a couple of students this year who would have been in the top 10 percent of their class had they graduated with the cohort of 2017, and now they won’t be in that top 10 percent.”

Simmons said students who graduate early can also hurt themselves because they will not receive an official class ranking.

”Your ranking does impact how schools see where you fall with your class, and where your test scores need to be,” she said.

Rosa Lucas, who was supposed to graduate in 2017, is one of the few students who is currently on course to graduate this year, ahead of schedule. She began the work of graduating early during her sophomore year, creating a plan with her counselor to take Twilight courses and doubling up on core classes to get ahead in her credits.

When she began school this year, Lucas also had to convince Simmons that she was ready to graduate ahead of schedule. Simmons originally discouraged her from it because she knew it could complicate things for Lucas as she tried to apply for admission and financial aid for college.

Lucas said it was very difficult to do, but she thinks that everyone has the capacity to graduate early, which she thinks is interesting.

“I loved that finding out that it’s not about being smart, it’s just about putting effort into something you want to do,” Lucas said.

Lucas isn’t the only student who wants to graduate early; Junior James Watts says that he wants to graduate early to get into the Marines.

“I didn’t do much preparing in middle school,” Watts said.

Watts devotes his time to the core classes he takes currently, and his JROTC elective.

“ROTC helps me out in the long run for my military career. Being in there for 3 years gives me an extra stripe coming out of boot camp,” he said.

Students who plan to leave high school earlier than usual are under a time crunch when trying to get everything done as quickly as possible.

“It’s pretty hard. It’s stressful trying to pass all my classes, coming to school everyday, and doing the work,” he said.

Watts spoke with his former ABL2E counselor, Adri Ruiz, and together they created a plan for him, but the new counselor, Joann Reyna, looked it over and saw that it wouldn’t work.

“I was scared because it couldn’t be done at first, because of a Twilight (credit recovery) situation, but we were able to figure something out,” he said.

The new plan consists of Watts passing a credit by exam test for Spanish 2, taking core classes, and having JROTC as an elective.

“I personally feel like it is not a good idea for students to graduate early,” college and career center counselor Sarah Simmons said.