Lenoir County Early College is an NC New Schools/Breakthrough Learning network school.
While most super seniors at the Lenoir County Early College High School can expect to graduate with both a high school degree and a two-year degree from Lenoir Community College, only two will be going straight from high school to graduate school.
Lindsey Turner and Smikal Patel have been working overtime for the last three years to complete all the necessary prerequisites that would allow them to effectively skip their undergraduate degrees and proceed directly to pharmacy school.
Traditionally, students wanting to study pharmacy have to finish a two-year or four-year premedical program before being accepted into pharmacy school.
“You’d be surprised at how much we were able to do here,” Turner said. “I think all but one of the classes we needed we got here.”
To get the one credit they were missing, the girls traveled to Mount Olive University.
In order to complete all their prerequisites for pharmacy school and the early college, both girls not only had to enroll in summer classes for three years, they had to plan out their schedules at least three semesters in advance.
“Something would always come up, and we would have to run back to our advisor and reschedule again and again because one class would conflict with something else,” Patel said. “It was a lot of hard work, and we were doing it on our own.”
The work paid off, however. When they graduate this spring, Turner and Patel will each have nearly 100 college course credits to their name, while their peers will have roughly 60.
