More than 90 percent of this year’s graduating class will attend college or vocational schools next year. The remaining handfull will follow other paths. Several 2008 graduates will take a year off, join the Coast Guard, head overseas or begin working.

According to information from Mercer Island High School, of the college-bound graduates, almost 170 will stay in the state, with 59 attending the University of Washington, 28 Western University, and 28 Washington State University. Thirteen students will hop across the lake to Bellevue Community College, and a handful of seniors will attend vocational schools such as Renton Tech (1), Lake Washington Tech (1) and the Seattle Art Institute (2). The remainder will attend numerous schools throughout the state.

Thirteen graduates will head to Oregon, the majority (9) enrolled at the University of Oregon, two at Willamette University, one at Linfield College, and one at Western Culinary Institute.

Thirty-three students will venture further south to the popular college state of California: 10 will go to Santa Clara, four to the University of San Francisco, three to the University of Southern California, the University of San Diego, Occidental College, and Loyola Marymount, two to Claremont McKenna, Cal Poly, Pepperdine, Pomona College and the University of California, Davis and individual students will attend a sprinkling of other California schools. Four Islanders will enroll at Stanford University.

One Islander will head to the University of Nevada this fall and four will study in Arizona at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona. One senior will attend the University of Nevada. Nine MIHS graduates will depart for Colorado: the University of Denver (3); Colorado College (2); Colorado State University (2) and the University of Colorado (2); and two will head to Texas.

Sixteen graduates will move east of the mountains to the University of Idaho (3), the University of Montana (9), Montana State (1) Caroll College (1) and Rocky Mountain College (2), and seven will head north, across the boarder to the University of British Columbia.

Islanders will also represent their class on the East Coast. Nearly a dozen students will be attending small, liberal arts schools in New England: Colby College (3), Mount Holyoke (1), Tufts University (2), Marlboro College (1) Green Mountain (1), Amherst and Middlebury College (1), the Culinary Institute of America (1), Parsons School of Design (1) and the Pratt Institute (1) among them.

As for the bigger East Coast schools, one Islander will attend each of the following universities: Columbia, Hofstra, Fordham, Brown, Boston, Connecticut, Princeton, Penn State, UPenn, Villanova, Dickinson, Lafayette, John Hopkins, George Washington, Mt. St. Mary’s, and Wake Forest.

In the Midwest, Islanders will attend the Northwestern University (1), DePaul University, (1), the University of North Dakota (1), the University of Wisconsin (1), Marquette University (1), Macalester College (1) in Minnesota, the University of Michigan (1) and Andrews University (2).

One graduate will head to the University of Alabama at Birmingham and two will fly off to the University of Hawaii. Two students will depart for the other side of the globe, one attending the College of Dentistry in India and another the University of Sofia, Bulgaria. Fifteen Islanders are undecided about their future, and three are taking a break from academics next year.