How Vine Academy Prepared Us for College

I recently asked my fellow Vine Academy high school program graduates how Vine Academy prepared them for college. Here’s what they said.

Organization

Many of our graduates focused on how Vine prepared them to manage their time effectively. One graduate said, “Vine has taught me how to stay organized and on top of tasks while most of my peers have struggled to do so,” and another added, “Compared to all my friends and classmates, I always am able to get my work done on time in an efficient manner and I never miss classwork or assignments.”

Some of the graduates also highlighted the usefulness of bullet journaling. All Vine Academy high schoolers are given a bullet journal where they write down their daily studying and reading assignments and check them off once they’re finished. This process gets them used to keeping track of what they need to get done each day and how much of that work they actually accomplished. One graduate talked about how, when he was struggling to remember all his assignments, he returned to bullet journaling and found it was just the solution he needed.

Note Taking & Studying

Some of our graduates focused on how Vine showed them how to effectively take notes and study for tests. One graduate talked about how he disliked note taking until “Ms. Amanda taught me how to take notes well and in a way that makes it not boring.” He explained that this new approach to note taking keeps him more engaged during his classes.

One graduate described how he has noticed that he performs better in his classes when he handwrites his notes instead of typing him. He continued, “This skill was something I had gained through Ms. Amanda’s classes, in which she not only taught us amazing, in-depth lessons, but she also taught us how to best format paper notes. While practicing this skill at Vine, I found that I was able to keep up with faster-paced lessons over time, which has helped me more effectively follow along with various college lectures.” 

Crucially, Vine also taught us how to study from notes deliberately and productively. I still use the cycling method of studying that Vine teaches whenever I need to review for a test. Vine also emphasized how important it is to study daily. Most of my college classmates wait until the week before a test to start studying. While they’re trying to cram a lot of content into a short period, I’m just reviewing a few small concepts because I’ve been studying all along. Spacing out my studying also makes it easier to relearn old material when I’m reviewing for a final. Since I learned it deeply the first time, it comes back more easily.

Writing

Most of our graduates discussed how Vine’s writing class prepared them for college level essay writing. Specifically, they say they feel more comfortable writing essays than their peers do and how they are confident in their ability to plan their essays and finish them on time. One graduate shared, “Ms. Jessica made me realize that I do not have to stress over essays and that I can push through and do things.”  

Another explained, “The skill I believe Vine helped me improve upon the most would be my writing skills. Vine taught me how to effectively write different styles of papers (research papers, subject analysis, etc.). Going into college, I was a bit nervous about the workload and what the standards would be for their classes. As essays and projects began to be posted, I followed the format I had learned through Vine to complete them and have never scored below an A on any written assignment! 

One graduate explained how Vine’s research papers prepared him to research and write about history. He said, “My time spent reading for my dozens of college essays and two senior seminar papers has left me with a new appreciation for the skills Vine gave me regarding proper and useful research methods. I'd largely credit our annual historical research essays for this, which gave me crucial experience for conducting true historical research during college.”

Another explained, “Vine's approach to teaching essay writing greatly improved my time management skills. Since we were almost always working on an essay (whether planning, writing, or editing), I became very familiar with how long each step of the writing process typically takes me. Now here in college, I can accurately plan out my days and weeks because I know exactly how much time to set aside for a paper. This is especially helpful when I have multiple papers at once that I still need to balance with day-to-day readings.”

Some of the graduates specifically focused on how they still rely on the four-square and TIEE essay formats they used as Vine students to structure their essays. Four-squaring is the process Vine students use to outline their essay’s arguments before beginning their first draft, and TIEE is the template they follow to ensure their points flow coherently. One graduate described a time he had to write an in-class essay: he noticed how everyone around him struggled to write without a clear procedure and that their first drafts required a lot of editing due to this. Meanwhile, he was able to fall back on the familiar tool of four-squaring, which let him quickly lay out his essay and minimize the time he spent on revisions. 

I had a similar college experience when I realized that a paper I mistakenly thought was due the next week was actually due the next day. Luckily, I had lots of practice writing papers quickly because of the assessments we did regularly in Vine’s writing class. At Vine, an assessment is an in-class essay that students must four-square and write in 40 minutes, then submit for a test grade without an opportunity to get edits on it from their teacher first. Since I had so much practice four-squaring and writing efficiently, I was able to read my research sources, four-square, draft, and edit my paper all in three hours. I turned it in on time and got an A on the paper.

Another graduate explained, “Although typical four-squares are too small for my longer, more involved research papers, I still lean heavily on the planning skills they gave me. I consider planning a paper to be the most important step, and I like to think through every move I plan to make over the course of my argument in order to best develop my thoughts. Without Vine's emphasis on organizing my thoughts before officially writing a single word, I would be totally lost trying to plan papers as I write them, and my prose would be a lot more disjointed as a result.”

Another graduate shared, “One of the most important tools I got from my time at Vine was the TIEE essay template. We used this for all our long writing projects and the experience I got with it during high school has served me very well ever since. Every one of my college essays at Oxford and back in the US were based on that template I used in my first year of high school, and I have received high marks on all of them. More than perhaps anything else I learned at Vine, this template has stayed with me as an ever-present tool. I do not know how I'd organize my papers without it.”

And Vine teaches how to write more than just essays. Another graduate described how Vine taught her to write emails in a professional and polite tone. She explained that Vine’s lessons about “how to politely request things without being too demanding but also still being clear and direct” stuck with her. She considers this a “crucial skill that I think some people just didn’t get a chance to develop, and it’s hurting them now.” I have also benefited from Vine’s email writing lessons. The other students in one of my classes were always complaining that the professor took a long time to reply to their emails, but he always replied to mine. It seemed like he was able to respond to my emails more quickly because they were clearly written and easy to answer.

Other Comments

One graduate credited Vine with teaching him how to communicate well with others. He described how Vine “has helped me create plans to effectively lead others by conveying my ideas clearly and effectively.” Similarly, Vine helped me develop my public speaking skills. Our presentations to our projected learning class once a year during the science fair let me practice my public speaking skills and gain confidence in a way that wasn’t stressful. In college, I often volunteer to present first for class presentations because I was already comfortable speaking to an audience at Vine.

Another graduate talked about how Vine helped him learn how to stay deeply engaged during his classes and helped him increase his overall academic skills. He said, “I even made honor roll last semester, something I never would have dreamed of before I went to Vine.”

Vine showed me that I didn’t need to be intimidated by math or science. Many of my classmates at college seem to find math and science intimidating and to struggle with the content in these courses. Mr. Michael and Ms. Abby gave me a strong foundation in these classes and taught in a way that made the content seem interesting and approachable. I love taking math and science classes and am currently a TA for the Intro to Statistics course at my college. Another graduate wrote about how “the wide reaching and rich lessons” at Vine “all combined together to help make me a lot more well versed in a variety of topics compared to my peers. Vine went into detail and helped set strong foundations for every single class that I have taken.”

One of the biggest reasons that Vine made us feel really prepared for college is that Vine takes the time to explicitly teach many core academic skills that other schools assume students will figure out on their own. Our teachers at Vine taught us how to take notes, how to study, and how to plan and write essays. They taught us how to manage our time and how to stay organized. We got so much practice with all of these skills that by the time we got to college they were things that we could do successfully and automatically, and that allowed us to dive deeply into our classes and to successfully complete assignments.

by Darci Vogel