By Brent Kuszyk
Special to The Outlook
One of the true highlights of serving on the LCUSD Governing Board is having the privilege of distributing diplomas to our graduating seniors each spring at graduation. Their sense of optimism and excitement is contagious.
The future looks very bright for our class of 2018 graduating seniors. This year our students will be disseminating around the country to 33 states as well as to South Korea and the United Kingdom. Of the 322 who reported matriculating to a college 202 (63%) will be attending institutions in the state of California. The second most popular destination is the state of Washington with 13 students headed to our northern neighbor. Among the students who will be attending two-year schools, Pasadena City College is the most common destination with 60 students.
Out of the approximately 76% who will be attending four-year colleges, 45 students will be attending UC universities with UC Berkeley (10) and UCLA (8) being the most common. The most popular four-year college this year is USC, with 18 of our graduates headed to Exposition Boulevard. I can’t recall a larger USC class in the past.
Being an East Coast native myself, I’m always impressed with the students who are willing to sacrifice the endless summer days of Southern California and brave the colder climates back East in places such as: St. Olaf College in Minnesota, Syracuse University, Boston University and Case Western in Cleveland. (Pack some warm clothes!)
In regards to those students who are venturing outside of Southern California, we have folks headed to Penn, Brown, Cornell, Notre Dame, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Michigan, the University of Chicago (three), Haverford College, Northwestern, Swarthmore College, Brandeis, Brigham Young (six), Clemson, University of Texas at Austin and Emory, to name a few.
There is diversity of majors, including some very interesting ones such as Sequential Arts, Wine and Viticulture, Surgical Technology and Conservation Biology. The most popular majors are those in the STEM fields (32%) with Business/Finance coming in second place at 17%. Some of our talented students from our LCHS music programs will be majoring in the performing arts (8%).
Three of our students will be headed into the military, while others are choosing to take a gap year or enter the work force.
We are so proud of the class of 2018 and wish them great success in all their future endeavors.
Editor’s note: Brent Kuszyk is a member of the La Cañada Unified School District Governing Board.
