Many juniors and seniors have chosen not to graduate early this year, but some upperclassmen still believe that the gain is worth the loss.

The number of mid-year graduates has dropped by half since 2014. Forty out of 546 total students are graduating after first semester during the 2017-2018 school year.

Brooke Ory, a senior at EHS is one of those students.

“I’m not sure why as many kids aren’t graduating early anymore. I don’t see the point in staying longer if you have all your credits,” Ory said. “I want to work full time to save up for college and my own apartment.”

Other seniors are against graduating early because it detracts from the “high school experience.”

“We’ve worked hard for 12 years and now we finally made it,” said Drew Berthlett, an EHS senior. “Why back out now?”

Ory would argue that while graduating early means she will miss out on certain senior privileges, that isn’t incentive enough to get her to stay. The pros outweigh the cons.

Besides Ory, many other seniors are graduating early, including Jessica Barker, Morgan Gray and Sam Tilden.

According to Barker, she is graduating for the same reason.

Since she will be 18 when she graduates, her plans are to work full time as a waitress at Buffalo Wild Wings until August, when she will start college at SIUE.

“I think that graduating early forces the person to become more responsible earlier than the rest of their friends,” Barker said. “It gives them a head start on the rest of their lives.”