Academics
As a laboratory school, Uni high gives teachers the creative liberty and support they need to develop challenging and innovative curricula. To cultivate students’ innate desire to learn and grow, high quality project-based and hands-on activities are paired with traditional lectures and testing to foster an environment of intellectual curiosity, creativity, and excellence. In support of our mission, all academic courses at Uni are honors courses. The curriculum is organized across eight areas: computer science and digital media, English, fine arts, math, P.E./health, science, social studies, and world languages. In addition to the required courses in each area, students have access to extensive elective offerings.
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Learning beyond the classroom
Academic extracurriculars
Uni High supports its academically passionate students both in and out of the classroom. Students can pursue academic extracurriculars across departments, with offerings growing and changing according to student interests.. Programs range from a summer design program taught with university faculty to Math Circle, a math-focused club that creates outreach activities to the International Thespian Society, to the annual Oral History Project broadcast on Illinois Public Media.
Academic competitions
Many Uni students lead teams and participate in competitions where they can meet students from across the area, state, country and world. Just a few examples are Scholastic Bowl, Chess Team, Math teams for all grade levels, Model United Nations, Japan Bowl, various writing competitions and Mock Trial. Faculty sponsors and student leaders work together on competition prep while students also learn organizational, collaboration and leadership skills.
Independent studies
Independent study opportunities encourage students to pursue a self-directed, self-initiated intellectual inquiry that goes beyond Uni’s curriculum, either for deeper exploration of a current subject or to explore a topic not included in our course offerings. Independent study students choose a problem or topic and, with the guidance of a Uni faculty member, pursue it a point where it satisfies a student’s curiosity or need at the time.
Concurrent enrollment
As a privilege of being affiliated with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Uni High juniors and seniors receive a tuition waiver for U. of I. classes taken during fall and spring semesters; they are still responsible for any materials costs/fees. (Students who qualify for free/reduced lunch may request Uni assistance to pay for textbooks for U. of I. classes.)
There are both Uni High and U. of I. policies and procedures on concurrent enrollment that must be followed.