WEB EXCLUSIVE While many hopped on a plane or spent the summer in bed, other students hung around campus, opting to get ahead on course requirements or pursue their interests.

“I decided to take [U.S. History] because it allowed me to take IB Global Politics this year,” junior Miley Sherman, who spent June on the Broadway Campus, said. “History is definitely my favorite subject so I thought I would actually enjoy the content.”

Sherman, like many others who took the course, used it as preparation for the U.S. History subject test this Saturday. The course also fulfilled the U.S. History requirement for all University of California schools except UC Santa Barbara, according to University of California.

“I think taking a summer course is beneficial because it is right after school gets out, so things are fresher in your mind,” math teacher Jordan Lewis, who taught Honors Geometry this summer to rising freshmen and sophomores, said. “You are able to cover a lot of material in a short amount of time which helps you see connections better between different topics.”

Many seniors also took a summer course before junior year in preparation for the two-year IB program and are now seeing the effects in their schedule.

“Last year I chose to do summer physics because I wanted to take IB higher level bio my junior year,” senior Maggie Walter, who is continuing the class this year, said. “Looking back I am very happy that I did it because I got to take a class I am much more interested in.”

Like Walter, many rising juniors used the summer U.S. History course to prepare for the IB program, according to Sherman. For each test, students would have to answer 50 multiple choice questions and write an essay on a prompt given at the test.

“We were being prepared for IB in that there was writing without knowing the prompt, but it was not an IB course,” Sherman said. “But all of the [juniors] taking the course were in IB and used it for that purpose.”