By Brent Kuszyk
La Cañada Unified
Governing Board Member
The future looks bright for our La Cañada High School class of 2017 graduates. With a graduating class of 334, the students are spreading their wings throughout California, across the United States and the world. Of the 315 graduates who reported matriculating to a college, 62% are staying in California while the remaining 38% are heading to 29 states as well as to France, England, Canada and South Korea. Twenty-two percent will be attending two-year colleges with Pasadena City College the highest attendance at 46 students.
Out of the 78% who are attending four-year colleges, the most popular is UC Berkeley with 17 students out of a total of 55 attending UC campuses. Other highly attended schools include Cal Poly (12) and UC Santa Barbara (10).
We have our typical large contingent headed to USC (10) as well as arch-rival UCLA (9). Harvard, MIT, Caltech, Brown, Yale, Cornell, Georgetown, NYU, Emory, UT Austin and Michigan will be welcoming our graduates as well.
There is a diversity of majors, including some interesting ones, such as animal science, biopsychology, anthropology, and welding and aviation science. The most popular majors are business and engineering. The class is blessed with numerous talented musicians attending some of the nation’s finest music schools, including the Cleveland Institute of Music and Berklee College of Music in Boston.
In addition to college plans, we have students joining the military (11th Army Infantry), some taking a gap year and a few entering the workforce. LCHS Associate Principal James Cartnal, who oversees all college counseling, described the class of 2017: “The graduates of the class of 2017 impress me with both the breadth of the applications they cast and the success they achieved in getting into best fit colleges, near and far, small and big, and public and private. I wish them all my very best regards for success on their academic journey.”
