Get a real college experience at no cost — take some summer community college classes

Saratoga students often take a variety of West Valley summer courses, whether it is for college credit or self interest.

Students have enjoyed taking advantage of the free time during the summer to pursue a passion at a community college for free.

From the last day of finals to the first day of school, there are exactly 64 days of summer vacation for students to relax and pursue extracurricular interests. For students looking to do something enriching over these 9 weeks, it’s smart to consider taking summer classes at local community colleges.

West Valley College and De Anza College both offer free summer courses to local high school students, with a wide variety of subject areas ranging from biology to accounting. These enrichment classes offer experiences beyond the scope of high school offerings and also have a lot more course options tailored to individual interests and industry-applicable skills, making them a popular summer activity.

Brad Ward, the school’s college and career counselor, expressed that summer classes serve as a great opportunity to delve deeper into subjects after students complete the Saratoga High curriculum.

“Some of the more common courses would be math classes for students who have reached the end of the curriculum here, after completing AP Calculus BC. They often go to colleges to take Multivariable Calculus or Differential Equations,” Ward said.

According to Ward, both West Valley and De Anza offer excellent courses, and students often choose between the two based on their personal preferences. Generally, more students take courses at West Valley because it is the closest. However, De Anza College offers more classes because it has 16,000 students vs. the 7,000 at West Valley.

According to guidance counselor Toni Jones, students can also receive high school credit if the course fulfills graduation requirements like applied arts or visual and performing arts. Other students may also choose to take courses over the summer to skip class levels for certain subjects such as math. Ward too often finds that this can often leave students unprepared for the courses that they skip into.

“The summer is only nine weeks, much shorter than a semester, and the summer course often doesn’t have the full content given in the high school class,” Ward said “Often students come back to a course they aren’t ready for and get a bad grade.”

Sophomore Samvrith Bandi, who is looking to pursue a career in computer science, took IOS Development and Cybersecurity at De Anza last summer.

“I would definitely recommend it. IOS development was very educational. Additionally, the food at De Anza was really good, and the overall experience was positive,” Bandi said.

While Bandi’s classes were in person, junior Richard Li took Introduction to Philosophy online last summer at West Valley. Even though the course was taught asynchronously, Li found the professor’s online lectures to be especially clear and engaging.

“I had a lot of fun taking philosophy,” Li said “The professor was really good at converting abstract ideas into rigorous, tangible concepts and words that I could make sense of.”

Ward noted that taking courses at community colleges can be a positive, novel experience. Most classes have much larger class sizes than those at SHS with people of different ages — even many older adults. After taking philosophy, Li plans to take several more college courses before graduating.

“I wanted to do something over the summer, so I tried philosophy and it turned out to be so much fun,” Li said “I’ve been looking into new courses that I might consider taking this year’s summer because of the experience from last time.”