May 11, 2015
50 Year Issue
Eleanor Skelton
[email protected]
Faith Wilson earned her high school diploma and her bachelor’s degree from UCCS on the same day.
Wilson, who was technically still in high school, graduated from UCCS in spring 2011 with a degree in English.
“I think a lot more [people] are doing it now, I felt pretty special at the time,” Wilson said. “One [other] girl graduated from CTU in the early college program, and she was 19.”
Her parents homeschooled her until she lost interest in ninth grade. She then applied to Colorado Springs Early Colleges to further her education.
“By the time I enrolled in Colorado Springs Early Colleges, I was in my sophomore year and I had exhausted my Pikes Peak credit, so they just said go on over to UCCS,” she said.
Because Wilson was under 18 for most of her undergraduate career, she had to reapply to the school every semester.
“Since you were technically not a student, you were bottom of the barrel for picking classes because you had no degree standing [due to being] high school concurrent,” she said.
“I made it work every semester, but when you’re in that situation, they don’t know what to do with you.”
Wilson accumulated 168 undergraduate credits.
“My last semester, I couldn’t graduate until I had degree standing, and I couldn’t get degree standing until I had a high school diploma,” she said.
Wilson transferred to another early college program to take an online social science class which finished her high school requirements. She finished the course in three days.
“Technically, because of all my college credits, I was valedictorian of that school I’ve never been to,” she said. “And their graduation was the same day as UCCS graduation.”
Since graduating, Wilson has considered graduate school, but is satisfied in working from home as a content editor for a company in Denver and modeling for an alternative fashion group in Colorado Springs.