Waukesha North High School senior to earn WCTC degree before high school graduation
Nicole Cheesman, a student at Waukesha County Technical College and senior at Waukesha North High School, will graduate from college before graduating from high school. Thanks to dual credit, she is able to earn 60-plus college credits during high school – many of which have been paid for by the School District of Waukesha. She will earn her associate degree in Business Management on May 15 followed by her high school diploma in June.
Cheesman developed a passion for business early in her high school career, taking numerous related classes until she exhausted her options.
"I never really understood what it felt like to love a class as much as I did when it came to learning about business," she said. "I started taking every possible class that I could for business with the high school – until I couldn't take any more!"
She began program classes at WCTC in summer 2020 completing three classes and earning nine credits. She maintained the momentum taking 10 classes and earning 30 credits in the fall semester, and then another eight classes and 23 credits this semester.
"I was always someone who liked to excel in school," she said. "This just was another option for me to do that."
Besides a full course load, she also works two jobs – one at her family's company and the other at a grocery store.
Cheesman is one of the more than 52,500 high school students in Wisconsin to take advantage of dual credit. Statewide, in 2019-20, students earned nearly 229,000 credits – over $31 million in college credit savings.*
*Source: Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS) Dual Credit report, Nov. 2020