[Billcat]

Willow,

It may very a bit from place to place (especially with regard to in which grade students move from elementary school to middle school).

These days, this is a fairly typical program:

Starting when you are age 5, you enter elementary school for six years(kindergarden and grades 1-5).

Assuming you did not skip or repeat a grade, you would be 11 when you transfer to Middle School (Grades 6-8, 3 years).

You would most likely be 14 when you enter high school (Grades 9-12, 4 years). Assuming you complete high school, you would most likely receive your high school diploma and graduate in June when you are age 18.

After high school, many of us went on to college or university. The only real difference in the US between the two is that colleges typically offer only four-year Bachelors degrees, while universities also offer Masters and Doctorates. My school, Dartmouth College, is ranked as a major research university. It is unlikely, for historical reasons, that it will ever be known as Dartmouth University, as that is the name the State of New Hampshire created when they made an unsuccessful move to invalidate the Royal Charter that created Dartmouth in 1769.

When I started school, we started in the fall of the year that we reached the age of 5. So, being born in late 1952, I started school in September 1957, at age four, along with the other kids born in 1952. Of course, I turned five shortly after school started.

In most states, students can legally drop out of school at age 16.