S 18's HS offering college credit for HS classes: worth it?

Parents Forum
1

S 18’s HS is offering college credit for 3 courses that he is currently taking: Algebra 2/Trig, US History 1 and British Lit.
The credit is from St John’s U in NYC. The letter from his HS about the program is below.

Some parents are saying “No-brainer, well worth it” while others say “Not worth it, the credits may not be accepted at whatever college they attend in future anyway.”
One factor is that the HS does not offer AP courses but a number of students do take AP exams that they’re interested in after completing relevant classes.

Your thoughts? Pros and cons?

(this is the letter from the HS)
Dear Parents of the Class of 2018,

St. John’s Advantage program offers juniors an opportunity to take classes with college credit for a course taught by our Faculty.

Each course includes additional work designed by the department offering the credit.

$ 325.00 for each course you select.

Students may sign up for up to three courses.

Students receive a letter grade through St. John’s University in addition to a grade they receive on their High School report card.

http://www.stjohns.edu/academics/academic-resources/college-advantage-program
http://www.stjohns.edu/sites/default/files/documents/provost/m1-6819_college_advantage_brochurepgs.pdf

2

In putting on my parent hat.

I would have a problem paying for this and if your child attends a NYC public school, US history, and AL2/trig, which are given junior year are both courses that are required for graduation from high school. If your child goes to parochial/private school, AL2/Trig and US history are high school graduation requirements.

IMHO, you should not be paying a tuition fee, for something that your high school is required to provide (if you are paying for parochial school, then you are paying twice). This college course is being taught by your high school staff.

If your child is receiving an advanced regents diploma, they will need to pass the AL2/trig standard or common core regents exam. Unless your child has already passed Global, they will need the US History regents as a hs grad requirement.

I would not be paying $650 for 2 courses that my high school are required to take and the high school must provide. If your school does not offer AP/IB, then your child will not be penalized for not having these courses.

I don’t know whether your child attends public or private school however,

If your child attends a NYC public high school, your high school will have a CUNY college now partner where they will be able to take up to 12 college credits for free, with your college now partner. If you are based in Queens, depending on what is closest to your high school, your college now partner is York, Queens, Queensborough or Laguardia.

http://collegenow.cuny.edu/

Questions that you must also ask yourself is if it your child’s college will grant him credit for these courses (you would have to check with SUNY/CUNY) because your child will be receiving both high school and college credit for the same course. You probably need to check with St. Johns to find out if their own school will accept these credits should your child decide to attend there.

3

I will offer a cautionary tale on taking a required high school course for college credit.

I have complained about my daughter’s history teacher before - knows exactly what he can get away with to avoid the scrutiny of the administration, won’t leave until he retires, very harsh guy, universally despised. At the beginning of the year he encouraged the kids to fill out a form where they could take his class for college credit through a local college - it’s a college prep class, not AP. I did not pay much attention because, frankly, I thought it was a bad idea for a high school teacher to be teaching a college class and I didn’t see the gain in it for her. Junior year history is required in my state for graduation.

Thank God she didn’t do it. This school year in history has been a nightmare - she is doing fine, but that’s because one of my (finally useful) degrees is in American history. Half the class gets by through cheating (he uses the same quizzes year to year and they get passed around). It has been so bad that I have alerted the guidance office that my incoming freshman better not get him as a teacher.

So, long story short: The college class will be taught by the high school teacher who may or may not be certified/able to teach that class. I would ask parents and kids what they thought. If it were a first year program, I would not be a guinea pig. And, as mentioned above, the credits might not end up being useful anyway.

4

Would this also require the kids to pay St John’s U to send transcripts to colleges they will apply to later (which is unnecessary because the grades are already on the HS transcript)? Many colleges require applicants to send transcripts for classes taken from all schools.

5

And if this goes to the left and your child applies to grad school as coolweather mentioned, they will have to send this transcript as part of their academic record (the LSAC will calculate it it the GPA)

6

My D had a high school course for college credit. The fee was about $100 and in retrospect was totally useless. No college she applied to cared about it. It was only good for credit at one state college, that we knew she was never going to attend. No other college would have accpeted it for credit, and she scored a four on the AP subject test for it anyway. Unless he wants to attend that college, I wouldn’t bother.

7

Same experience as Lindagaf. S was applying to top schools, and none of them were going to be interested in credits from the local community college, much less for a class like College Accounting.

I am totally confused about the OP’s situation, though, since the math class is a basic high school level course that most kids would need to graduate. Is this a way for the high school teacher to be paid extra from the college on top of his high school salary?

8

It’s most likely a way to offer something “like” AP without having to meet the requirements to have a course certified as AP.

I would just take the AP exam independently - the rules for accepting AP credit are pretty clearly defined by most colleges/universities.

1 Like
9

Our school does a lot of dual enrollment courses through a local community college. The tuition rate is literally $5 per credit hour. S15’s 12th grade English class, his Spanish4 class, a Microsoft Business applications class, an Astronomy class, and an Advanced Bio class were all dual enrollment, and were accepted at his SUNY college for ~22 credits. The teachers all had to be certified to teach the college level class, and there were extra portfolios, exams, or projects required to obtain the college credit. These classes meant that he didn’t have to take Freshman English, didn’t have to take any foreign language (or even test out of the requirement), and had some of his general education natural science and his computer literacy credits out of the way. Plus he had some AP credits, too–he started college as a sophomore with 30 credits. So, it definitely depends on the classes and the colleges your child is applying to, but dual enrollment classes can be very useful.

10

^^^ The type of dual enrollment described above makes sense. However in this case there’s no mention of the teachers being certified to teach at the college level. Sounds like it could be much more difficult to get credit when it’s a course taught in the high school by a high school teacher that just adds extra work. I wonder how the university is determining the letter grades if they have so little involvement in the curriculum/level of rigor of the course? AP won’t allow a school to list a course on a student’s transcript as being AP without first passing a College Board audit…

Taking the AP exam is cheaper than this option with a higher likelihood of receiving college credit.

11

College credit for taking Trig?

Do some homework- what four year institution is going to give credit for a not-particularly-advanced HS class?

12

My kids high school does the same thing with a local community college. IMO, it is worth it if the school your child will attend accepts these credits. Most of the highly ranked schools do not accept the credits that are obtained while being taught at the high school. I literally sent emails to a group of local colleges that have the program my youngest daughter is interested in along with the class codes from the community college to find out which classes if any would be accepted. Most of her courses going forward will be accepted so I will decide at the time if it is worth it etc on a course by course basis. If you can reduce a semester of tuition or allow your student to take higher level courses earlier or now have space to double major it seems like a benefit. I did pay for one of her classes this year.
For my oldest, having credits from AP and duel enrollment helped her get a double major and graduate on time.

13

It really depends on what your child is going to do after graduation, but there aren’t many scenarios which are worth the cost. Both my high school kids have dual enrollment classes, but the state pays for them. Transferring credits is so tricky that I wouldn’t pay $325/course for credit from a CC. It doesn’t change the rigor of the coursework being taken, so I fail to see value.

14

A large number of incoming college students are not college ready. This forces colleges to offer remedial classes to those that need to be caught up. This is great for high schools because now they can claim that their high school classes are equivalent to remedial college classes. This is also great for the students because now they can get credit for the remedial college classes that are equivalent to the high school classes they were going to take anyways.

15

I have three children who went to rigorous private high schools offering both AP and dual credit courses. All three kids took maximum advantage of dual credit classes and graduated with between 24 and 30 credit hours. All three went to well-regarded, but not super elite, private universities. Thanks to these credits:
Child #1 graduated in four years with a double major, including a semester of student teaching and a change in major).
Child #2 graduated in 3.5 years (including more than one change in major) and transitioned immediately into a master’s program, finishing both degrees in 4.5 years.
Child #3 will graduate next year after 3 years, and will head directly into a master’s program.

Dual credit classes saved us at least $50,000 in college tuition. If you choose classes and colleges wisely, the return on investment is excellent.

16

While I agree that college credit for taking trigonometry (precalculus) while in high school is of no value, note that colleges do offer that as a remedial math course, due to the significant number of students who need it. For example:
https://www.math.princeton.edu/undergraduate/course/MAT100

17

No point for algebra 2 or trigonometry.

For the history and English courses, could the student take the AP exams at the end of the year?

College credit for courses during high school would be most useful for college level courses that are not covered by AP exams (e.g. multivariable calculus and other similarly advanced math courses), or where the AP exams are less commonly accepted (e.g. calculus-based physics for physics and engineering majors).

18

One of our children took a number of classes through DE and it saved about a years worth of tuition so definitely worth it in that case. That said he still had to take extra math at the college level to make up for the math shortages but some of those classes for General Ed requirements.

For my current senior I paid for the college credit for his pre-Calc class last year, however it was through our flagship. I did my homework first and based on his school list at the time it counted at enough of his schools as either a general Ed requirement, the waiver of a block or as a placement test to make sense. If he goes to his financial safety it was worth the price, if he ends up elsewhere it remains to be seen as the list of schools has changed since then.

I am not paying for it for my current sophomore in the same class. He’s a track ahead of his brother and it is of much less benefit to him than the 2 AP calc tests will be and the combined price of those 2 is less than the 5 credits from the flagship,

19

We were offered the same option and declined realizing most colleges wouldn’t take credit for the courses and since they were tough classes, D figured she’d want to take them again as intro courses anyway.

20

People are losing the point of the initial post. It’s not whether dual enrollment or AP is worthwhile. In most cases dual enrollment/IB/AP is very worthwhile. It’s whether taking a course at a high school taught by a high school teacher that then gets an accompanying “letter grade” from a university is worthwhile at a cost of $325/course.

Will colleges accept this? And what is the point in taking “college-level” algebra2/trig when that’s a level of math colleges expect students to have mastered in high school? It’s not going to get a student any credits at most reputable colleges.