@3scoutsmom I’ve been trying, but school policies can get very confusing and sometimes school websites are badly organized. At the northeastern information session I asked how many credits could transfer and they said, 1 year. I checked the website and it said over 2 years. So, its very confusing. I’ll have 4 years worth of college credit by the time I graduate from high school (4 AP classes freshman + sophomore year, then 2 full years of dual enrollment with credit overloads some terms and summer classes. Obviously they don’t always apply to an engineering degree). Obviously the best way to maximise those credits would be to stay at the college I’m going to now, but it’s a state directional commuter school and it’s too easy and I’d probably have to coninue with my 1 hour each way bus commute which I’m getting a little sick of. Other options, like OU (where I’d be on the NM scholarship would be cheaper and give me a better college experience, but the credits really confuse me. From what it seems like, after I get accepted they’ll evaluate my credits so I can make a more informed decision next May but for now, I feel like I’m in the dark.
@ShrimpBurrito Our HS register told S to go ahead and submit his request for transcripts to be sent over the summer and she would send them after this semester’s grades are finalized.
My D had about 20 credits from AP and DE. They did not shave a semester off, but gave her some breathing room.
She only had to take about 55 credits of academic classes to end up with 70+ credits of pharmacy prerequisites in 2 years.
Each college has an AP credit policy. But the relevance depends on the major. Also DE credits might or might not transfer.
I know it helped to only have to take 3-4 classes a semester when she had 2 science classes with labs and/or ochem.
@snowfairy137 OU is very very helpful, ask for a meeting with and adviser from engineering to go over your transfer credits and see where you stand, you could likely do this over email. You need to ask very specific questions about how many more classes you’ll need to take to fulfill your major requirements. For my D it was like filling in a jig saw puzzle, she needed x requirements for her major, y requirements for her minor and z requirements to graduate with honors.
OU has some interesting core requirements like you must have one “non western” humanities class and you must have one core class that is upper level (I believe this is across all majors).
here are the engineering degree plans
http://www.ou.edu/checksheets/engineering.html
I don’t know what kind of engineering you are looking at so I’ll pick comp sci engineering since that is the one I’m most familiar with. DD has AP credit for physics C which is fine for her Meteorology major but since she is double majoring in Comp Sci so now needs Physics for Engineers. Just because the degree is 126 it doesn’t all your credits will count toward that 126 number, you have to have the specific classes required.
My D just sent me another “trial” Common App essay and I loved this one. I stay out of editing (it can use a little editing) but I’m so encouraged! She’s really writing interesting stuff in her own voice, without my input at all. Who knew? I learned with my older D that I could gain so much insight into her world - that I just completely missed - just reading these essays.
@TexasMom18 @mommdc
Great suggestions, thank you! This is for Arizona State. Students fill out the simple ASU app, then once accepted, they can submit the more detailed app (plus recs) for Barrett Honors College.
I talked to D tonight about requesting the transcript now before school is out, and she said she’s decided to just wait until school starts in August to deal with the apps. She has already asked her Ace-in-the-hole favorite teacher for a rec letter (and is bringing her homemade cookies tomorrow), but is wavering on the second one. I’ll try to back off and let her sort it out. She always gets it done.
@3scoutsmom, Awesome help as usual.
Have you started planning S20’s classes?
@BingeWatcher S20’s high school classes will be very similar and he will take the same DE classes. Biggest difference for S20 is he says he absolutely does not want to take AP Psychology instead he plans to take AP Stats junior year and Advanced Stats senior year.
@snowfairy137 if you haven’t already, go to OU transfer equivalencies database and search for each of your DE classes to find out the OU equivalent (note if you class doesn’t appear in the database you only get a general elective credit for that class and it won’t really count for anything other than ‘class standing’)
http://www.ou.edu/content/admissions/apply/transfer-credits/transfer-equivalencies.html
then go through the OU AP equivalent and note which classes you’ll get credit for from AP’s
http://www.ou.edu/recordsandtranscripts/transfer-credits/advanced-placement.html
print out your degree plan and see how much of the credit you have after converted to OU classes can really be applied to your degree. Sometimes the core requirements had difficult to understand on the degree plan sheets you can find more information here:
http://www.ou.edu/gened/courses/requirements.html
I was surprised that none of the courses that you can get credit for for AP Music would count towards the artistic forms requirement.
@ShrimpBurrito I was just putting together a spreadsheet to begin to track admissions by school and ASU (and Barrett) on D’s safety list as well - I noticed that grades are self reported and transcripts follow once admitted so you should be fine on that one. For the majority of schools on our list (but not all) this seems to be most common. Also for us, our GC’s get back a couple weeks before school starts so they are accessible if needed and transcripts are ordered online.
@3scoutsmom I thought if your class wasn’t in the database that meant they hadn’t evaluated that specific class yet? That is very possible just with geographic location, size of my current school, and classes I’m taking.
Thank you so much, @my2caligirls ! I see it now–I just skimmed right over the asterisk. Great news! For the record, D loves ASU/Barrett. They have a 4+1 Masters program that she has renewed interest in. With her anticipated 50+ hours of AP credit, she could probably finish the Masters degree in 4 years. She may want to visit again.
@ShrimpBurrito we know a girl in Barrett who loves it - hear very good things and sure we will visit as well. With that much AP credit it is sure nice if she can take advantage of it. My D18 will have around 40 hrs (AP/DE) and that will factor into where she ends up I’m sure. She is also looking to accelerate UG for masters but the grad school component will likely be at different school.
@bearcatfan : I applaud your DD for having the courage to come out and say she feels she needs some downtime this summer. A lot of kids do, but too few come out and say it. Junior year is a bear. First semester senior year counts. The summer is an important time to recharge those batteries. That is not to say a rising senior can’t be productive over the summer, but it is the last, best chance for a mental break. Cheers.
@snowfairy137 have you looked to see if your classes are on the OU database? I could be wrong but I was told that to get the credits that were not on the data base transferred to OU credit you must provide a course syllabus and list of textbooks used to the department that credit is for (cs classes go to the college of engineering, language classes go to the college of arts and sciences, etc…) for each class and they may also ask for additional information. Sounded like a PITA to me.
@3scoutsmom yes; all the sciences I’ve taken are on there, some of my general eds, but none of my engineering classes (which I’m going to be taking a lot of next year) or math classes. I think its due to the fact that probably only a couple people before me have transferred. The syllabus and the list of textbooks are pretty standard things to provide for evaluating credits, so I’ve been keeping a folder on my computer with all of my syllabuses (they usually include the textbooks).
S is wanting downtime here, too, and I support that.
He’s registered for 9 hours of college credit over the summer, plus driver’s ed. He’s also decided not to do the Future Physicians program this summer through UCR because it means he’d be in class or at FPL lectures from 7 am to 8 pm every Thursday, with a 3 hour break in the middle (plus another 3 hours on Weds). They don’t actually overlap, but ugh!
He will apply again next year.
It’s weird that “downtime” includes 9 hours of coursework, but this is down from the 15 hours plus driver’s ed, plus FPL that he was initially considering. We’ll see how the 9 hours thing goes. It’s possible that it might turn into 6 hours, which would be the first EMT class and a film studies class he’s planning to take together with his gf.
Got the ACT test results booklet back. S18 was howling over his silly mistakes, but you have to consider the situation and time constraints and not having the answer key sitting in front of you 
What’s surprising to me is the narrow margin of error. One more wrong answer would have dropped him from a 35 to a 34. If a highly selective school pushes him up slightly higher because of the 35 and because of that little bump, he gets in where he wouldn’t have otherwise… his entire college search could really have come down to getting one random reading comprehension question right. Then again, getting just 3 of those silly mistakes back could have meant a different outcome in the opposite direction.
Then you think back to the PSAT, which will determine whether he gets four years of free education, housing, food, books and various expenses to one of our in-state schools. All because (essentially) he did well on a multiple choice test largely based on what he had learned the first two years of high school…
Pretty crazy.
My D is weird when it comes to down time. She doesn’t like it. She needs to be busy. I know there are pros and cons to having this kind of Type A personality, and we’ve talked a lot about how to manage it when she’s in college and has a much more unstructured schedule. She’s quite concerned about what she’ll do with her time when she’s not in class eight hours a day with five AP classes plus 3-6 hours a day devoted to swimming and coaching. I am hoping that once she gets to college, she’ll discover all sorts of new interests and be able to keep herself busy in productive ways.
@ShrimpBurrito it may be just another case of the grass is always greener, but I’d love to be in your shoes… trying to motivate S18 to do something versus just consume something for even an hour is like pulling teeth. About the best thing I can say is - he generally chooses useful things to consume On the face of it, we have pretty much exactly the same concerns about college but on a far different level compared to what you are facing: given no restrictions on his free time to consume to his heart’s content and with vastly more available options of what to consume, what kind of pandora’s box are we opening up in 15 months?
@NamePoster Oh I have some kids like that, too. 
H and I educate/lecture til we’re blue in the face with some of our boys, set structured schedules for them, yet we can’t seem to jiggle that intrinsic motivation handle. It’s an interesting study in the nature vs nurture debate.