Hi there. My son will be applying to colleges in the fall. He is currently a highschool junior (in California) and has taken a few community college courses. He earned an A in each of the classes and they are all listed as CSU/UC transferrable. His highschool does not include the classes on his highschool transcript and so I am just not sure as to how the grades will be calculated or considered when applying to CSU or UC. Do they count as two classes per semester? Are they counted as 4 points or as 5 points? We are disappointed that some of the private colleges and out of state colleges that he is looking at do not calculate the community college grades into admissions GPA.
If the DE courses are UC/CSU transferable, then the student will receive credit for these courses at the UC’s and Cal states.
For the UC’s, DE course’s taken the summer after 9th through the summer prior to 12th grades are counted in the UC GPA. Each semester DE course is counted once and receives 1 Honors point in the calculation. All courses are self-reported on the application and final HS and College transcripts are submitted once the student enrolls.
For the Cal states, they are included in the GPA calculation according to CSU website for courses taken the summer after 9th grade. The DE course grades are counted twice but only receive 1 Honors point. Final transcripts from HS and College are usually due when enrolling. Some CSU’s may ask for Mid-year transcripts after admission.
Now with the Cal states, it seems to be campus specific regarding the GPA calculation.
For CSU Long Beach, a parent posted in the CSULB forum:
CSULB stated that the DE courses are not given Honors points (weighted) in the GPA calculation.
I contacted CSULB admissions today and asked whether dual enrollment community college classes are counted as honors classes when determining GPA. The admissions rep said that they do not count the dual enrollment classes as honors.
For SJSU, another poster stated this:
SJSU stated that they do not use the DE courses as part of their CSU GPA calculation for the major thresholds.
For the CSU’s, I would contact each specific campus you plan to apply and ask about how they calculate the CSU GPA using DE courses.
For my knowledge, I emailed admissions at both schools about their DE policy. SJSU has not gotten back to me and CSULB stated I need to make an appointment with admissions which I have not yet followed up. If you find out any information in your research, it would be much appreciated if you could post your findings here.
The bottom line here is that DE classes WILL help your son in the application process.
UC app won’t tell you a numerical number after entering all the classes he has taken, HS+CC. The capped/uncapped GPA people report here is calculated from RogerHub.
CSU does give you a calculated GPA but since we only applied to SLO, I can only say their reply to this question is to not worry about the numerator/denominator problem. They recalculate after getting all the info.
Read a number of threads on this. There is no need to focus on “GPA” as a absolute numerical value. The context of how the GPA is calculated is also very important as well as what the classes are. The college classes count for “rigor” and is just as helpful, if not more to a “higher” GPA. Kids with “high GPA” get rejected all the time.
CSU counts a semester of college class as one year in their A-G count (I believe and Gumbymom will know more on this) and having more years will help separate your son from the rest. UC just count as semester, but the idea is same.
Hypothetical kid with 4.8 taken 10 classes will likely to get rejected while another hypothetical kid with 4.2 but having taken 25 classes may get in. My personal opinion is people who try to game the GPA will get rejected; just take as many classes that interest you, do well, and everything will work out.
DE classes are considered “preparation” by most top privates, so they are unlikely to give you transfer credit. So if your son has 30 units, he will start Berkeley as a Sophomore while Stanford will make him start as Freshman like everyone else. Lower tier privates will grant credit, so just be aware. UC and CSU will transfer credit based on Assist.org listed agreements.
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I would agree with this part!
I’m not convinced that loading up on CC classes is a panacea for admissions; anecdotally it didn’t seem to work extremely well for some students from our HS this cycle.
But if the classes genuinely fit the student’s interests, that’s great in itself, and any admission benefit would just be gravy.
This is true. Students should explore classes that interest them. Colleges offer literally hundreds of classes to explore.
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