Is it really that uncommon to be older than 18 and still be in school?

39 comments

1. I graduated at 19 and I was one of the oldest kids in my school.  (I had been kept back a year when I was young.)

2. Id say its not rare for people to graduate anywhere from age 17 to 19. After that, it starts to become rare.

3. When I was in high school the only people still in school at 19 were those who failed and had to repeat a grade. 20 or older was unheard of.

4. Can you explain what 13th grade is? In America, high school ends once they complete 12th grade at around 18 years old. At that point, they have the option to continue their education in various ways, but it’s not required.

   Edit: I graduated a week before my 18th birthday.

   Edit 2: Why did the mods remove the post?

5. American school is structured to finish at about 18 yrs old. But then many people continue on with their education into a college or university to learn a trade or seek degrees. Those programs can run anywhere from a few months to several years. It’s just a different structure than it sounds like OP has.

6. Unless you had a medical reason that caused you to miss classes and graduate late, if you are older than 18 and still in high school people will assume it is because you were held back for being dumb.

7. I’m sure there are some. I didn’t know any personally they were 19. I graduated at 17.

8. If you’re counting university, then no, almost everyone is over 18 when they start college.

   In the US ~~primary education~~ standard public education (grades K-12) ends around when a person turns 18 most commonly.

   The age/birthday cutoff for most districts is sometime between September and November, so probably 2/3rds of students will turn 18 during their final year of primary school.

   It used to be more common for children to get held back a year if they were underperforming, but that has generally been phased out and is not a regular practice.

   So yes, it is common to be 18 and still be in High School, but only for your final year, after that it’s college, where ages can be all over the place, but most students are 18-22 years old.

9. The average age of a high school graduate is probably a little under 18. 17 and 18 are most common. 16 or younger happens for people who skip grades. 19 happens but is unusual. 20 would almost certainly mean you were held back due to difficulties of some kind.

10. Yes — maybe 1-2% of students are 19+ when they graduate high school. GED is a different story.

    The education system places students with intention so high school graduation coincides with their 18th birthday.

    While people may have anecdotal experience, it is by definition, uncommon.

11. I don’t think anybody in my graduating class was 20. There *might* have been a couple of 19 year olds, but for the most part it was 18 and 17 year olds.

12. Most people graduate at 17 or 18. You’ll occasionally have someone graduate at 19 (I want to say there was only a couple that age in my graduating class of around 250). Older than that is going to be unusual. I may ve wrong, but I dont believe youre allowed to go to school if youre 21 or older, but instead have to get your GED. May be state dependent or even just an incorrect, I’m honestly jot positive.

13. American kids generally graduate highschool (12th grade) at 17 or 18. I my experience, if a kid graduates at 19, they were held back a grade because they couldn’t pass. It’s seen negatively

14. People are going to come in here with anecdotes, but I bet you can find statistics on this.

15. Our public school system (generally) stops paying for your education when you either turn 21 or earn your high school diploma, whichever comes first.

    Both my adult kids graduated late. It wasn’t a big deal for them but it was kinda a big deal for their schools – late graduations are lumped into the same category as drop outs in the statistics. So kids that don’t graduate on time affect their “graduate” stats and hurt the school’s rankings. So there is a big push from the schools to get kids through high school in no more than 4 years.

16. What we call “high school” ends at 12th grade anything after that is considered college. It’s uncommon to be in high school after age 18, it usually means you’ve failed multiple classes. At least in my state you have to leave high school before you turn 21. If you can’t graduate before 21 you have to get a GED, basically the adult version of a high school diploma.

    College is all over the place. You can graduate college when you’re 20 if you’re a high achiever, you can start college when you’re 50 if you want to and can pay for it.

17. I was 17 when I graduated.

18. It’s uncommon. Everyone I know graduated at 17 or 18. My graduating class was about 700 people and we had 3 people that didn’t graduate on time and had to take summer school

19. Typically in America, you start school when you’re 5. We have kindergarten and then grades 1 through 12 after that, so most people graduate at 18. It’s common to still be 17 and it’s common to have recently turned 19. It’s uncommon to be older than that unless you have been required to repeat a grade or left school and then returned to finish.

    I only know one person who graduated at 20 and that was because he failed too many classes to graduate in time and dropped out, but then returned a year later and took the classes again.

    Edit- this doesn’t count college/university. That can add another 2 to 8 years to a person’s schooling, depending on field of study. It’s rare to start college sooner than 18, but adults can go at any time.

20. 17-19 is normal in the United States because of how birthdays fall within the school calendar. A 20 year old isn’t common but implies the student was held back in a year, usually for poor grades. I don’t think you can be in the school system past 21. In middle school we had a 17 year old who failed multiple times. At 18 he was kicked out. Idk if that is possible now or not because holding underperforming students is not really a thing where I live specifically anymore

    Personally everyone I was close to graduated at 16-18 because we were very high achieving students and were often even taking college classes.

21. Canada? In the US, we only have through grade 12. Most people are 18 in grade 12. Many Americans think the whole internet is about them and state things as universal truths. We are so annoying. Sorry.

22. No. The typical American school system involves starting kindergarten if you are 5 years old by sometime in the fall, which means most students will turn 6 sometime between the start of kindergarten and the start of first grade. (A few will turn 5 shortly after starting kindergarten.) That translates to turning 18 between the start of 12th grade and the start of the next school year. 9 of those 12 months tend to be in the school calendar year, so yes, plenty of last-year students turn 18 before graduation.

23. So I think when you say 13th grade you are actually in your 14th year of school. Is that correct?

    So you could start kindergarten at like five years old? Then you’d do 1-13. Is that correct?

    In the United States, most children start kindergarten at five years old and then we have 12 years of school after kindergarten so in that case kids would typically be graduating at 18.

    But some kids like mine don’t start kindergarten until they turn six and so they typically will graduate high school just before they turn 19. If we had a 13 year school program kids like that would graduate just before they turn 20.

    Sounds like you may be started even later or got held back maybe…

24. Not at all depends on what time of year you were born there’s some cutoff you start kindergarten aroujd5 but depends on time of year. My niece is turning 18 in January and she’s a HS senior.

25. Most American public schools will start with kindergarten being 5 year olds, usually the child will have to be 5 or turn 5 within a month or two of school starting (usually by some date in September). Add 12 more grades to that, and most will be starting 12th grade (last year of school) at 17, meaning graduating at 18 is typical.

    Starting a year late (kindergarten at 6) or failing or being held back a grade is the most common way to graduate at 19. Anything older than that is very atypical.

26. 19 wouldn’t be very uncommon, but 20 and 21 would.

    Kind of related – when I was in 7th grade (most kids were 12 going on 13), a boy mentioned to a teacher that he was 16. Shortly after that, the school bumped him up to 9th grade so he’d have time to graduate before he aged out of being allowed to go to high school.

27. From the sounds of it, a majority of US 18 year olds shouldn’t actually be graduating, but schools are no longer allowed to fail or hold back students without navigating a minefield.

28. In the US school goes up to 12th grade. It would be unusual to graduate at 19. Based on most cutoff days being in late summer or early fall, most graduate at 17 or 18. If that carried into a 13th grade, it would be 18 or 19.

29. I went to high school with a 21 year old guy. He had to repeat several grades, not sure if he ended up graduating.

30. I guess you mean high school? No, it’s not uncommon.

    Typically students graduate at 17 or 18. When starting out in kindergarten or first grade students are usually sorted by birth month. Maybe some start a little younger than their peers while others will wait and start the next year and be a little older than their classmates.

    It can also depend on the individual’s academic success. Some might be held back a year (or more) because they are not doing well or have missed a lot of school because of illness or injury. Others might excel and skip ahead.

    There is quite a bit of variation but high school graduation at 17-18 is most common.

31. Becoming much more common in the U.S. now as kids repeat 8th grade for sports reason. At my kids’ school there are so many that parking is becoming a problem because so many sophomores can now drive to school (16.5 in my state, so used to be only juniors and seniors).

32. In the US most turn 18 during their senior year of High School.

33. Most graduate at 17 or 18, some are 19. Any older than that is unusual. Kids typically start school (kindergarten) at five but waiting until six isn’t rare.

    In my state it’s legally mandatory to be in school from the age of 6 to 18 (unless you graduate high school prior to turning 18).

34. No one in my high school graduated older than 18 except 1-2 students with intellectual disabilities who are granted up to age 21 or 22 to graduate, iirc.

35. We don’t have “13th grade”
    After 12th you would go to college ( university to you)

    You would graduate at 21 or 22 from that typically

36. I was 19. I was held back along with my sister. We were living in Germany when my dad died. Mom and the us army took too long to send us back to the States. Then mom didn’t enroll us in school to finish the year. I was one of the few to be 19 out of a class of 250.

37. I’m a July baby it was start school at 5 or 6. I started kindergarten at 6 and turned 19 the month after my high school graduation. I was probably one of the oldest in my class. I think I knew one person who was 19 and she lied and said she was younger because it was kind of a weird thing. 

    It’s kindergarten and then grades 1-12

38. For special ed students many states allow them to stay in public school until age 21.

39. Many high schools in the US have an actual policy that people older than like 19 can’t even attend. If you haven’t managed your diploma at that point, you have to get a GED, which is like a course and test you can take to get a high school equivalent diploma in the mail. The reason for this is that they don’t want young adults attending school with minors.