High school ages

[elizabeth_rice]

Hello! I'm writing a story set in the US (FYI, I'm not an American). My main character is a high school student. My question is: if my MC is 15 when he starts high school, when should his birthday be?

For example, say the student's birthday is 26th June 1997 (this is not my MC's birthday). So what grade would this student be starting in 2012? Ninth grade or tenth grade?

I tried to search this on google but the search results vaguely say "it depends when the student was born". Very unhelpful because that's precisely what I want to know.

If this varies from state to state, then I need this information for high schools in Virginia.

Thank you.

PS: should I tag my entry or should I leave that to the mods?

Comments

[birke]

I agree with this comment.

It used to be common to organize schools as "junior high" (seventh through ninth) and "senior high" (10th through 12th). These days, most of the school districts I've known (in Maryand, Virginia, California, and Oregon) divide into "middle school" (6th through 8th) and "high school" (9th through 12th).

[melannen]

I know of a few rural districts that still do the 1-6/7-9/10-12 split (mostly, I think, because they're still using old buildings that were organized that way). None of the ones I know of are in Virginia, but there are some very small rural districts in Virginia, so I wouldn't be surprised if there were a few.

[elizabeth_rice]

Thanks for the additional info. I had wondered about this divide between junior high and senior high as well.