Friedericks (second from left, pictured with family members), a recent grad of IU High School, will leave his home in Tanzania to become a member of the IU Class of  2008 on the Bloomington campus this fall.

Ali Mortensen and Peter Friedericks live on different continents, but they both graduated from the same high school—a high school, they say, that well prepared them for college.

Mortensen, of Cary, N.C., and Friedericks, of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, both graduated this year from IU High School (IUHS), a diploma program that students complete entirely at a distance.

Mortensen and Friedericks are only two of the 102 students who have graduated from IUHS since its establishment in 1999; graduates have been accepted at dozens of universities, including the American College of Rome (Italy), Auburn, California State, the University of Chicago, City University of New York, Columbia, Dartmouth, Harvard, IU and other private and public universities.

Both Mortensen and Friedericks said they enrolled in IUHS because they wanted to work at their own pace. "I had been in public school," said Mortensen, who runs her own residential cleaning business, "but I wasn't fitting in with the other students, and we didn't go at a pace that was fast enough for me."

Similarly, both graduates wanted to be challenged. "I enjoy challenges," said Friedericks. "They push me to succeed and to work harder. In the classroom, I sometimes felt held back by my classmates. With IU High School, I could work at a fast rate, and this allowed me to graduate a year early from high school."

Mortensen and Friedericks also took advantage of the program's university-level dual-credit courses, which allow students to earn high school and college credit simultaneously. "I enjoyed the challenge, and I liked earning college credit," said Mortensen, who was so pleased with her dual-credit courses that she signed up for additional university courses after receiving her diploma. "I wanted to be doing something," she explained, "while I waited to start college in the fall."

Both graduates believe their IUHS experience well prepared them for college. "I believe IU High School prepared me for college work better than ‘normal' high school," said Friedericks. "In normal high school, you would most likely get a project or something to do in your classes. In IU High School, the typical assignment asks you to read and to write papers," says Friedericks. "This, if I understand correctly, is much like college."

Mortensen and Friedericks will both enter college this fall. Mortensen will go to East Carolina University in Greenville, N. C., where she'll study chemistry and social sciences. One day she'd like to work in pharmaceutics. Friedericks will go to IU in Bloomington, where he'll major in math. He hopes to become a college professor.

IUHS is administered by the IU School of Continuing Studies' long-standing Independent Study Program. It offers a versatile, rigorous and flexible 109-course curriculum. More than 30 courses in the curriculum are offered online, and the number of online courses continues to grow.

Enrollees in the program come from diverse backgrounds and include home-schooled students, performing artists and athletes, students living abroad, working students and students otherwise seeking an alternative high school program.

For more information about IUHS, telephone 800-334-1011 or 812-855-2292; E-mail scs@indiana.edu; or visit the Web:

http://scs.indiana.edu