<p>I go to a school where students have the option to begin taking classes at the community college their sophomore year. That being said: most enter college being a second-semester sophomore or a first-semester junior. Some actually get their Associates by the time they graduate. I was wondering, if I graduate with my Associates, would colleges most likely see this as a positive or a negative?</p>
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<p>I would think this is definitely a positive. If you earn your associates you can transfer as a sophomore to universities and transferring is a lot easier than applying as a freshman applicant. It is a much higher acceptance rate, even to prestigious schools. You will be ahead and you will save a lot of money since community college is much cheaper than universities. I did dual enrollment for part of my senior year in high school and made 18. This helped a lot because I ended up dropping two classes during my fall semester this last year and this sort of saved me from being behind and I am still ahead. If I could go back I would have started dual enrollment in my sophomore year instead of the middle of my senior year.</p>
<p>Edit: If you start dual enrollment I would definitely recommend striving towards a associates with a good GPA (3.5+) When you have an associates and apply as a transfer the university does not care about your high school work as much since they know you can handle college courses. In fact they will hardly consider high school work compared to college work. Most if not all will not even ask for ACT/SAT scores when you apply for a junior position, and there is less essay writing involved in transfer applications.
Even if you don’t earn an associates degree this could still be a big plus for you, by showing the university you can handle college courses, and you could still save a year or more’s worth of university tuition. </p>
<p>Maybe this is different for very very prestigious universities and anyone can correct me if i’m wrong, but this is what I learned applying as a transfer this year.</p>
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<p>The colleges that you apply to want to know if you pursuing a rigorous course of studies in high school or not. Dual enrollment courses will show that. Whether or not it makes sense for you as an individual student to complete a full associates degree is another thing.</p>
<p>If you will be applying to some colleges that will accept your AA or AS as completing their general education requirements, it usually makes sense to finish the degree requirements. That way you won’t have to spend time (and money) in college on those gen ed courses - you will be able to skip ahead to classes that are more meaningful for your degree, or just more interesting to you. If all the places you are applying to will evaluate your transcript on a course by course basis, then it might make more sense to take the specific community college classes that you are interested in (or that you know will transfer as something) even if it means that you won’t finish a complete AA or AS.</p>
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<p>I’m sorry but this is not at all true for “prestigious” schools. It’s been shown many times on CC that acceptance rates to Ivy schools, for example are even lower for transfer students than the very low rates of acceptance for freshmen. Some year, there are no transfer students accepted. However, I think that if you do earn cc credits while in high school and prior to your hs graduation, you are not considered a transfer student. You should really confirm this with each college you may be considering since every school makes their own policy.</p>
<p>It’s possible that there are some schools with higher transfer acceptance rates but the only way to confirm that is to check the Common Data Sets for each individual school. </p>
<p>The most likely school where you will benefit from earning an AA from a community college would be your state flagship. Still if finances are an issue, you should be aware that if you are a transfer student you will not be eligible for much of the financial aid available only to freshmen.</p>
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<p>Oh yes, sorry by prestigious I meant great school like UNC Chapel hill, I wasn’t referring to Ivy schools. That’s why I said “it might be different for very very prestigious schools.” This is just information that I learned applying as a transfer this year. You can apply as a transfer straight of of high school to some schools, but not all, all schools are different. For example UNC-CH dual enrollment did not count towards class standing. So sorry about that! So everyone please ignore what I said if I am completely wrong, or research the colleges you’re considering because like I said all schools are different.</p>
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<p>It would be a positive in applications showing that you have been taking college courses and doing well. Be prepared though, while the more elite schools may look favorably on your work, they will likely not give you credit for your classes or only take a handful. </p>
<p>My DD is in a duel enrollment program and if she goes to a UC or state school, she’ll have her general eds done despite still qualifying as a freshman applicant. She may just graduate early. However, schools like Claremont Mckenna will only accept 4 community college classes. Colleges like Brown won’t accept any for units (just help with pre-reqs.) </p>
<p>We were warned up front to pay attention to how many units earned. There are less openings in universities for transfer students. There is less financial aid. For many schools, the magic number is around 60 units… if you earn 60 units, even as a high school student, you are considered a transfer student. However, check with each school individually as we’ve seen some as low as 26 units.</p>
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