My son has taken a number of courses through dual enrollment, and I have to say I think every high school student should try to take college courses at a four-year university between their junior and senior year or in place of some high school courses during high school (my son is taking 18 dual enrollment hours this school year and only two high school classes).
I’ve been able to warn my son of some of the dangers that lurk in some of these courses, including group projects with team members who don’t participate or show up. He was fairly sure he wanted to minor in engineering until he took an engineering course this past summer. He hated the class, hated dealing with autocad, and has no more interest in engineering. Accounting and business it is, although he is still interesting in a math minor. I’m not sure what one does with a math minor, but…
Taking a few college courses with a little bit of parental guidance is a good introduction to college work. It gives parents a chance to help their kids while giving them an opportunity to work at an advanced level. Also, it’s a chance to earn college credits while paying tuition or reduced tuition without having to worry about room and board. To anyone who gets the chance to have their children dual enroll in a four-year university, do it. Just thought I would pass these thoughts on, and welcome any others.
Given the greater availability of community colleges (e.g. there are 112 community colleges in California, versus 32 public four year schools), it is often more practical for a high school student taking college courses to do so at a nearby community college than an often further away and more expensive four year school. Most high school students taking college courses do not take courses more advanced than the sophomore level courses that are the highest level that community colleges offer.
Also, not every high school student is ready for college frosh level courses while still in high school.
Some kids are doing fine balancing high school, a job to contribute to the college fund or help defray expenses, plus volunteer work. Not every kid has access to good public transportation to get to and from a college campus or has a parent who can drive, lend a car, etc.
“Every High School Student”? How about “if your kid needs it, wants it, has access to a college campus, you can afford it” etc???
My kids did just fine once they got to college after a regular HS experience. And their colleges would not have accepted the credits anyway if they’d have tried to get advanced standing. For placement- yes. But not credit.
I was just hearing about a kid who took cc dual enrollment calculus. Guess what? Somehow it was a lot of work yet didn’t even cover the material from AB adequately. The poor kid is now enrolled in AB as a second calculus course, dearly wishing they had just taken AB last year. College courses for hs students are often expensive and inconvenient to schedule. I’ll stick with AP.
And IMO, a kid who is truly ready for college work doesn’t need mommy and daddy hovering over them micromanaging their schoolwork.
Everyone has different experiences with dual enrollment if they do it. I had a great experience, but not everyone does. It has benefits, but to each his own.
Caution: Dual enrollment means that the college class grade is part of your college GPA. If you don’t do well in a class it can bring down a college GPA before you even get started in college.
I don’t know the details. But at our hs, dual enrollment is regarded as being less rigorous than AP by the students, if not by the administration. But our dual enrollment classes are with our local cc. A good 4 year college could be a different matter, but the issues of cost, scheduling and transportation remain.
Interesting that you’re from Georgia. When we visited Georgia Tech last year, the Adcom cautioned against taking a dual enrollment calculus if your school offered AP. “We’ve seen too many kids trying to avoid a tough AP teacher by taking it at a college.” They basically didn’t perceive dual enrollment as particularly rigorous and did not recommend it other than for kids whose schools did not offer AP. We’re from another state and my son’s school also would perceive dual enrollment as a less rigorous option absent special circumstances (e.g., math above AP BC Calc. taken at one of our local 4-year colleges or a language that is not available). The only kid in my son’s class taking outside classes is taking Arabic and that’s in addition to her full load. It’s probably different in states like CA that have well-respected CC systems.
^^
my son’s experience is the exact opposite. he says his CC classes beat the AP’s by a mile. he had AP tests where they did not even cover the material in class. fortunately he listened to us and self-studied for them.
There was no way our kids could have taken a class at any college (community college or 4-year) without buying them a car for their own personal use. And that wasn’t happening.
We have reduced cost for DE $75 per class plus books. DD16 took a mix of AP and DE classes and started college with 90 credits (only about a third of those cout toward her degree). D18 will very likely go to school in state, he plans to take as many AP classes as possible for class rank but will take required gen ed classes that are not offered AP as DE, so far he’s taken Intro to Philosophy and plans to take Texas Government and Understanding Music.
were homeschoolers so the classes helped to validate college readiness;
got the classes for ‘free’ (county school district pays for them);
could carefully monitor what DS was doing, including drive him to and from class when needed;
felt DS was ready to interact with college-age students and advocate for himself with faculty;
had a clear understanding that DE grades would impact his h.s. and college gpa; and
ended up choosing a state school (UF) where his credits are highly useful. If he hadn’t done DE I don’t think our son would have gotten into UF (without SAT subject tests, AP scores, etc.).
If we were looking at elite private institutions, and could have pulled it off logistically, I think AP can be as beneficial as DE if not more so in certain circumstances.
We were extremely thankful for the DE experience, but I think it can vary from state to state and school to school.
he wastes far less time sitting in classroom getting lesser instruction
he is able to take classes he could not at HS (Linear Algebra, Diff Equations, ENG 111+112, Ethics, Engineering Drafting, Engineering Statics, Calc 3)
he just got a job tutoring Early College at the CC
he was able to get a full scholarship to Ole Miss Summer College so he went there this summer, had a blast, got 12 more credits, and got the feel of living in a 4-year residential Univ
he has a better mix of classmates. other HS students just did not care, it’s a better atmosphere among his CC classmates.
This is just as extreme as saying no high school student should take college courses. Many are simply not ready and won’t benefit from it or it will put them in undue burden to do that.
Also, possible bad grade received from it can haunt them when they apply to medical or law schools.
That’s fantastic. It seems to be very much a state-by-state, school-by-school (both the high school and the college offering the DE), kid-by-kid situation. You are definitely in a win-by-any criteria category since even the best high school probably doesn’t offer everything your son needed.
The only caveat I would offer is, if parents are counting on these credits to shorten the path to a 4 year degree, they need to check the policies of the colleges the student is likely to attend. In-state schools are the best when dealing with DE credit since it’s essentially their college system; however, many privates (and probably OOS publics) have strict limits on the amount of credit they will take from incoming freshman (likewise many schools limit AP or IB credit to 15 hours; I’ve seen as high as 21, there are probably some that would give you 30). Very few schools will give any credit for DE hours that are being counted toward high school graduation requirements.
I was on a tour this summer at which a father was extremely upset to learn that the university would, at best, accept only 15 of his daughter’s 60 hours (and only if they did not count toward high school) and even those would be evaluated by the registrar to determine whether they met the schools curricular standards (this was JHU, but these restrictions on transferring hours are very common). They told him that if the DE school gave her an associate’s degree, she might apply as a transfer, but they would still assess each class individually and might deny credit hours for some of them. I was not surprised because my institution has an identical policy (this process of individually deciding whether a school will accept credit for particular classes is also what they do when a student wants to transfer hours they took during the summer at another institution). It’s not so much that they hate DE, but rather that if they’re giving you a degree from X university, then you should satisfy the academic program that they’ve designed and take the majority of your courses at X university.
Federal law requires that every university post its policies on transferring hours, so it should be easy to find that information on-line. The DE institution can probably provide information about transferring hours to in-state institutions.
If I had known then where my daughter would be going to college, and what she’d major in, and what would be accepted…
I would have had her take dual enrollment English, history, and econ. At our high school, the DE classes were taught at the hs, but were considered less academic than AP. My daughter ended up in engineering, and those classes are required but the school would take a DE class. It would have been great to get those requirements out of the way. By taking DE rather than AP, she would have been guaranteed college credit.
That would have been the way to go. No one recommended it.