[eitally]

In addition this, at least in California, kids can dual-enroll in community colleges to take supplementary or more advanced (or even vocational) courses that mostly do transfer for college credit when applying to UCs & CSUs.

I sometimes wonder if this is how the German system came about, where there's a hard split in high school / gymnasium between the academic track kids and the vocational track kids (and there absolutely is not any shame in taking the vocational route).