BYU Online High School helps students maximize their high school experience and gain strength in all aspects of their lives. Staff and administrators seek to provide educational experiences that fulfill the Aims of a BYU Education: Spiritually Strengthening, Intellectually Enlarging, Character Building, and Leading to Lifelong Learning and Service.
Spiritually Strengthening
Courses and extracurricular online activities offered by BYU Online High School seek to provide inspiring learning. Positive, nurturing teachers, teaching assistants, advisors, and tutors seek to support students as they learn to excel in their online course, semester, and school. Our staff focuses on raising up a new generation of achievers—young people who are prepared to succeed in higher education, personal life, and careers. In alignment with these efforts, all students may opt to earn elective spiritual education credits. Latter-day Saints can do this by completing a Seminary or Institute requirement. Students of other faiths can receive credit through prior approval of a similar academically rigorous experience.
Intellectually Enlarging
As in any high school, BYU OHS sets graduation requirements that represent a well-rounded educational experience. And this includes advanced and elective courses! Our online catalog lists hundreds of courses that can help expand students' interests and horizons! Our Advanced Placement courses help high school students prepare to score high on AP exams and earn university credit. Career and Technical Education (CTE) courses allow students to explore their interest in potential career paths. From learning a musical instrument to practicing a foreign language to trying a new sport, BYU OHS encourages students to try new subjects that will help them learn more about themselves and the world around them.
Character Building
Online high school courses require students to take personal initiative and make the most of their education—an important character-building exercise. Current and former BYU OHS students humble-brag about their spreadsheets, whiteboards, calendaring skills, and other efforts to manage their schoolwork and pace their exam preparations. School staff support and encourage these efforts. Students learn that by managing their time well, they can have the freedom to spend daytime hours working on skills and talents, engaging with family members, developing physical abilities, practicing music, traveling, and much more. Accepting greater personal responsibility results in greater freedom.
Leading to Lifelong Learning and Service
Approaching the BYU campus, a large sign states, “Enter to Learn; Go Forth to Serve.” The fourth aim of lifelong learning and service reflects this idea—that a BYU education will serve the students and their communities for the rest of their lives. Similarly, BYU Online High School courses are designed to encourage students to continue pursuing their interests—to stay curious and never stop learning. While it may be hard to see the distant future from today’s perspectives, we aim to inspire students to learn for the sake of learning, develop abilities that can bless the lives of others, and work daily toward making the world a better place.
