Surprisingly enough, only 58% of Colorado students end up going to college. At Rock Canyon, students are used to the idea of going to college after graduation. With a 79% participation rate in AP classes and 61% of students being college ready. Rock Canyon places itself fairly high among other schools.

“I always just planned to go to college. My brother went and it wasn’t ever a choice really, we just grew up planning what schools we wanted to go to not if we wanted to go,” Hannah Vest ‘19 said.

When comparing the US states, Idaho has lowest percentage of students who go to college after graduation at 43%. One of the most popular schools that is applied to and attended by Idaho students is Boise State University. Around 20,000 students enroll there each year.

“I find it surprising that there are states where less than half of the students go to college, I would expect it to be more,“ Laura McKnight ‘19 said.

As for the highest percentage of students enrolling in college, Massachusetts has 74% of their graduates enroll in college. One of the most popular colleges for in-state students is Boston University, a little over 18,000 students enrolled in 2018.

“I’m really surprised that the highest state is only 74%. I thought it would be 80% or higher,” Sophie Martinez ‘19 said, “I didn’t expect Colorado to be so low, it seems like a place where a lot of kids would end up wanting to go to college.”

Compared with other states, Colorado is fairly close to the bottom in terms of the percentages of students that go to college. However, most states are in the low 60’s so although they are higher, Colorado ends up following close behind.