<p>I attend Continental Academy [a virtual school]. The school was regionally accredited, when I first enrolled. As of December 4,2009 they were dropped from the accreditation agency.</p>
<p>I called questioning them in regards to this ordeal, but I received a vague unclear answer.
They told me to call my university/college of choice for the answer.
Also, I have a high GPA and SAT score.</p>
<p>Will this effect my admission into a college/university, because my school is no longer accredited?</p>
<p>I’m curious as to why you are doing HS on-line but are worried about getting into college?</p>
<p>I’m assuming you are a soph/junior, if so, I’d run (don’t walk) to your local “real” HS and enroll. Otherwise, I think you might be doing college on-line as well.</p>
<p>^^^Ignore this. I would check with the admissions office of the colleges you are interested in applying to. I would think with a solid SAT score to match your solid GPA, it is not going to matter.</p>
<p>@fishymom:
I think its a bit rude to tell someone to ignore my (good) advice.
If you think getting a diploma from an unaccredated online diploma mill is going to help him get into college, please explain.</p>
<p>@MDMom: Yes, home-schooled kids do go to college, but that’s not what this is. Also your statement about test scores being “more important” is not correct when discussing any institution with competitive admissions. Please show me a reference to decent school where they state that test scores are more important than your HS performance?</p>
<p>“I’m assuming you are a soph/junior, if so, I’d run (don’t walk) to your local “real” HS and enroll. Otherwise, I think you might be doing college on-line as well.”</p>
<p>@soze, it was not my intent to be rude, rather to address the op’s dilemma. But I think suggesting to the op, “run (don’t walk) to your local “real” HS”, was rude and condescending. You have no idea of the circumstances of the op’s choice of schooling. And there are many high quality, well regarded on-line high schools that send kids to top 25 schools. I have no knowledge of this particular on-line school, hence my advice to op to inquire at the admissions office of his prospective schools.</p>
<p>MD Mom is correct that for homeschooled students, test scores carry more weight than for the average high school student in the admissions process.</p>
<p>that they admit students who do not have high school diplomas. So for many (but perhaps not all) colleges, you don’t even need to worry about getting a high school diploma. The key idea is to show that you are ready to do college-level work. That could be shown by test scores, as already mentioned in other replies, or by enrolling in some other school and doing well there, and possibly through other means. Many United States colleges have an explicit policy of open admission, meaning that they will admit anyone who applies (or perhaps any in-state student who applies, or any in-state student with a recognized high school diploma who applies), and quite a few other colleges in practice admit almost all students who apply, even if they reject a few. </p>
<p>Good luck in figuring what to do. Your first task as a high school student is finding high-quality learning experiences now that prepare you for later life. Getting credentials for college admission is important, but gaining knowledge and experience is most important.</p>
<p>My comparison was meant to be that students with all kinds of credentials go to college, not that the student was being homeschooled. And before you jump all over that, test scores do indicate some level of acquiring information and in my mind they can help validate grades. We have plenty of kids around here in public school with very high GPAs who don’t pass AP exams and don’t have high SATs. A high SAT score isn’t everything, but if there is a question as to how good a school is, the SAT can be an indicator. </p>
<p>And lots of kids chose different paths for high school for all kinds of reasons. The loss of accreditation is something that could be addressed in applications, but it depends on how familiar a college is with a school as to whether that is even necessary.</p>
<p>There is no reason also to automcatically assume that the student is being lazy going to Continental Academy to “buy a degree” as you so condescendingly put it. They used to call the University of Phoenix a diploma mill and now it is one of the largest colleges in the world and easily the largest undergrad body in the United States, who graduates thousands of students yeach year who work in many prestigious fields with well-paying salaries. In fact, it is the top ranking member of the For Profit Ivys, widely regarded as the “Ivy League” of for-profit Universities in the United States and abroad.</p>
<p>This student can graduate from Continental and go to one of the many fine institutions, whether a traditional 4-year state college or liberal arts college, an online school, a for-profit school, or any other college in America or the world potentially! :D</p>
<p>“they” might have used to call it a diploma mill, but some of us still do.</p>
<p>Here’s where I can shed some light on the subject as someone who does a great deal of hiring. I hire dozens of people a year and have been doing so for decades. As far as my firm goes, any resume with a “University” of Phoenix degree on it (or any other school of its type) usually goes right in the trash. In fact, there is a recruiting firm that we used to employ that we stopped using because they were not doing a good enough job filtering out these resumes.</p>
<p>And before you jump all over me for being a snob, etc. Bear in mind that I often hire people with <em>no</em> degree at all. Many people who do hiring would rather have someone with no degree + some relevant experience than somebody who thinks putting a degree from an “internet college” on their resume is going to get by us. I would much rather see someone who went to CC and/or a 4th-tier state college than a for-profit online school.</p>
<p>I have to admit though, your introducing me to the concept of “for-profit ivies” really did give me a good chuckle.</p>
<p>Universities do accept virtual school students. I was told by the university staff specifically. Anyways,Thanks Fishy Mom and Token Adult for your info.</p>
<p>So, what you’re saying that is that you would rather hire someone who graduated from the not-so-impressive high school system or puttered away a couple of years at some podunk third-tier-toilet in Alabama instead of someone who actually demonstrated that they could handle intensive college coursework? Really? well, best of luck with that! i hope you’re not hiring hospital employees or something… ;D</p>
<p>@Bedouin:
I think “intensive college coursework” is a great thing. A “degree” from a for-profit online business provides no evidence of this.</p>
<p>I think the problem is that you don’t understand a fundamental principal of business: they exist for one purpose, which is to return profit to shareholders. They exist for no other reason and in fact if management acts in any why which compromises this, they have violated their fiduciary responsibility. In the case of a for-profit educational enterprise, the advancement of knowledge can (and must) take a back-seat to turning a profit.</p>
<p>Contrast this with any “real” college or university. They have no obligation to make money or provide a return on their shareholders investment (in fact, there are no shareholders). They exist solely for the purpose of advancing knowledge through research and/or providing educational opportunities. </p>
<p>You may think that such institutions provide “intensive college coursework” and you are certainly entitled to your opinion, etc. But let me ask you this since you mentioned hospital employees: Would you let a surgeon operation on you if they received their degree online from the University of Phoenix?</p>
<p>Let’s pretend that this question makes any sense…</p>
<p>Okay, so if an accredited medical school accepted this person, an accredited residency program accepted this surgeon, and a state medical board saw fit to license this surgeon both as a general practitioner and as a specialist, I would have no especial bias against this person just because of his undergrad. To do that is almost as bad as racial or sexual bias and I don’t see any reason to tolerate or respect that kind of smug elitism in my personal affairs.</p>
<p>Bedouin:
I’m not talking about their undergrad degree. I’m talking about letting someone operate on you who received on-line medical training from a for-profit school.</p>
<p>Yes, I know there is no such thing, but if there was, would you?</p>
<p>If not, why not?</p>
<p>Just as I don’t think online-trained doctors are qualified, I pretty much have the same opinions of online-trained accountants, teachers, engineers, etc.</p>
<p>Don’t you think there is a reason why there are no accredited on-line law or medical schools?</p>
<p>Also, can you show me a single med school in the US that will accept credits from an on-line for-profit school for the four core pre-med courses (GenChem, OrgoChem, Bio and Physics)? Don’t bother looking, you will not find one.</p>
<p>Oh and by the way, is there someone else using your account?
I’m asking this because of the following post by your user name in another thread:</p>
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<p>This post of yours pretty much reeks of the “smug elitism” you accuse me of.</p>
<p>Well, that was creepy. Do you stalk everyone you have a conversation with, or is it just coincidence that you happened to be reading that other thread? Anyway, I’ll answer that question:</p>
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<p>I wasn’t accusing you of smug elitism. I was just responding viscerally to the idea that people who attend online high schools or online colleges are basically dead-enders who will never succeed at anything. And my post about “movers and shakers” was descriptive, not proscriptive. The fact of the matter is that many of our top people are from that higher echelon of universities (that is, the ones who went to college at all! :D). I do not believe that this is because those are the only people who can succeed in politics, but that’s the way it is and I see no reason to lie to a child and tell them that they should go to mediocre schools and that they will have an equal chance as someone who was groomed towards greater things. </p>
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<p>Sure, there is a reason. But I can’t think of a good reason. Yes, there is a possibility for cheating, but you can hardly say that cheating doesn’t exist at residential colleges. </p>
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<p>If a medical board accredited this doctor, then that would be enough for me. I don’t care if someone went to an online or a residential school, or commuted, or went to a community college for the first two years, no more than I would care if the doctor was black or gay or a woman. I do not invade the background of my doctor; the fact that a board of licensed physicians authorized by the state government has examined this doctor’s medical skills and found them beyond reproach, the fact that they used alternative educational means is no concern of mine.</p>
<p>Anyway, this discussion is more or less academic, isn’t it? The original poster is going to a virtual high school. Even if online colleges are defective in some ridiculous way, there’s no reason to assume that someone who graduated from an accredited virtual high school cannot go on to college. Colleges admit homeschooled students and even students who never actually graduated from high school. To somehow hedge out virtual high schools into some kind of academic ghetto reeks of apartheid.</p>
<p>Soze is right. The very nature of for-profit schools is not education, they are there to make a profit. And when the main goal is making a profit, education comes to the wayside and the benefit of receiving an education from a for-profit school is non-existent.</p>