Hey guys,
My guidance counselor told me today that I will receive less and less financial aid per credit hour I test out of through AP and Dual Credit classes. She said that since I wouldn’t be completing a full 72 credit hour course load over 4 years, I wouldn’t be eligible to receive my full financial aid package.
Has anyone else heard of this happening/experienced this themself?
Thanks for the help!
PS: I will be attending a private 4 year university in D.C. if that helps.
It depends on the school. Some schools may do this as described by your guidance counselor, other schools do not. Some schools won’t count AP and dual credit classes towards graduation requirements, so for these schools it’s not even a consideration.
You need to ask your university how they handle transfer and AP credits.
It is possible that what your counselor means, is that your initial scholarship offer included all four years. But if you have enough AP and transfer credits to finish in fewer than four years, you would not end up using all the money that is in that initial offer. Depending on how good the scholarship offer is, you might want to load up on transferable credits so that you can finish early and save yourself some debt and/or your parents whatever it is that they would need to pay for that fourth year.
On the other hand, maxing out on transferable credits can mean that you can take a somewhat lighter load, more “fun” classes, or double major and spend four years at your college/university. That’s what my niece did who entered with sophomore status because of AP and IB test results.
Err… your guidance counselor may have misunderstood something, or you may have misunderstoof your GC;
1° receiving AP credit doesn’t mean you don’t register full time. You can register for 12-13 credits to take it easy one semester, or carry 15-16 nevertheless either just by taking a class you’re really interested in through gen ed early on or by skipping ahead and having space as a senior. As long as you’re registered for 12-13 credits you are considered full time and thus receive your full financial aid.
2° your financial aid package is for 8 semesters. Don’t graduate till you’ve used it up, taking graduate classes if you can. Or graduate early but be careful, because once you graduate, financial aid for a second Bachelor’s doesn’t exist and you are on your own - better use of your time is to use the career center, study abroad, have an internship, etc.
I am not sure what your GC is talking about.
My daughter brought in 29 AP credits and will be graduating in 3 years. Her merit scholarship was for a set amount for 4 years. That amount is great, but doesn’t cover the full cost, so yes, we are “losing” the amount for the 4th year, but we are ALSO losing the excess cost we are paying. In my mind, that is a win.
Full time credit load is 12 credits at my daughter’s public in-state school. She is filling that up and then some, so I don’t think she is losing out on anything, and will graduate with no debt. Was way cheaper to pay $90 for each AP test than thousands for the classes.
You can always register more than 12 credits per semester no matter how many AP credits you got. All elective credits count even if they are not requirement for graduation.
Why would you take 4 years to do 72 credits? I am confused. Are your AP credits guaranteed?
Thanks for the replies everyone. I may have not been clear in my initial post, but I’m aware that you are still encouraged to study a full course load even with AP credits transferred — this is what I intend to do. I also know that AP credits are worth gold and should be cashed in as much as possible.
My counselor was making it sound like universities are starting to alter financial aid packages for each AP credit awarded to a student as a way to gain back some of the money they will lose by accepting the credit. She told me that I shouldn’t transfer an AP Test credit unless I will be getting a requirement fulfilled, and that if certain tests only allow me to gain elective credits, then it wasn’t financially worth it to me to transfer the credit.
I didn’t think this sounded accurate, but I just wanted to make sure I understood the system correctly.
Are you clear on what APs count for actual credit? I am confused by your 72 numeric.
What you said still doesn’t make sense. The only way I know the college may charge you more tuition because of AP credits is by making you pay upperclassmen tuition rate after certain number of total credits. Most schools would set a minimum of credits taken in that college before graduation. Also, most AP credits would be be counted for the major graduation requirements.
Really, if there are only 72 credits left out of 120 required (as per GWU), that would be a transfer.
The other thread has op in max of 7 APs that won’t all be credit usable I suspect. Like as not this is an abstract conversation. It is easy enough to look on most college websites to see what AP credit is usable for. The answer is usually not as much as you hoped or reckless use would be potentially risky.
Typo fixed in #9.
** I kind of understand what you are talking about. . . . but still not quite clear.
Our kiddo has a tuition scholarship to state school; it’s good for 130 credit hours. He had 19 AP credit hours that he transferred; these did not take away from the 130 free hours. If he had taken those AP classes as Dual Enrollment classes (which was an option but we didnt want to pay the fees!) then he’d have actual credits that would transfer over. The Dual Enrollment credits would count against his 130 free hours, leaving 111 free credit hrs for him to take, The transferred classes might not necessarily be needed to fill requirements and could have been costly.
Are you talking about something like this, OP, where AP credits take away from the amount or credit hours of a scholarship?
If you have dual enrollment classes, you don’t get to decide how or if those transfer, that is decided by the college you attend.
If you have AP exams, you can decide whether or not they are worth reporting to your college. In some cases, it isn’t even worth it to a student to take the exam in the first place because the score needed is higher than the student expects to get.
Applicants need to carefully evaluate how AP scores will be used at the colleges on their lists, and determine which exams are going to be useful for them.
Some colleges charge more once you reach a certain number of credits - in that case, you need to calculate carefully what credits you ask for. It’s especially important if the college also requires you to declare a major and thus have met specific academic benchmarks before you reach a certain number of credits.
That doesn’t make sense – if colleges want to keep students enrolled longer, they can simply choose not to accept or apply the AP credit, or put limitations on how it can be applied (so it can’t be used to fill core or major requirements, for example). Up to the college.
But if a student is receiving significant scholarship or grant aid from the college, it doesn’t make a lot of financial sense for the college to want to extend that student’s time on campus. It is not profitable to sell products at huge discounts. So yes, they logically would want to hang on their full pay students – but the idea that it would impact financial aid elibility doesn’t make much sense.
You can decide what credit not to be transfer as you can drop them. At UMich, freshmen can drop whatever useless AP or transfer credit by the end of the first semester in order to avoid paying upperclassmen tuition early.
@billcsho - That is good to know about UMich.
Our S received 60 semester credits from all the APs and one college course he took in HS. That was the max his U would allow any entering freshman. He still got merit aid for up to 4 years. He considered graduating early but we told him to take some fun courses and enjoy college, so he did. He was not given less merit aid because he entered with so many credits but was allowed to register earlier and get more of the courses and time slots he wanted because the credits gave him advanced standing.
Another U would have given him even more credits but he was happy with the U he chose. The other U also awarded him merit for all 4 years. Some kids he knew got a masters and a bachelors with their 4 years of merit funding.
^ Same for my D. With 33 AP credits and 5 from CC, she could easily graduate a semester early but decided to add a minor and have light load with fun classes each semester. The FA got better each year with more merit scholarships and practically free tuition for all 4 years even the last 3 years were at upperclassmen rate.