My daughter is taking enough classes that are from UT and Austin Community College and AP classes that she can get her Associates Degree in high school. Will this hurt her or help her getting into A&M in Engineering. Right now she is top 14% but she is a Sophomore and trying really hard to be in top 10%. Also how will that transfer over? One last question, if she got a 4 on a AP test, once she sends that to UT how will that look on her Associates Degree? Would that be a B? Right now she has all A’s in her college Classes. Thanks for you help!
@“Shireen and Alissa” “It depends”.
It depends on if she is a review applicant for admissions to A&M.
It depends on her major.
If she is a review applicant, meaning she isn’t an automatic admit by being in the top 10% of her graduating class by the end of her 6th semester (Jr. Year) or she doesn’t qualify as an academic admit, which is to score a minimum of 1360 on the SAT with minimum sub scores of 660 EBRW and 620 math or a 30 on the ACT with minimum sub scores of 27 in English and math, and if she does not receive full admissions to College Station (around 13% of all review applicants receive full admissions) then she will not be eligible for the pathway admissions of Blinn Team and PSA wouldn’t benefit her either because she will have most of the credit earned already to be able to participate in either program.
The other thing is that all credits she has through dual credit and AP may not apply to the major. It depends on the major and many competitive majors like the Engineering college, Mays Business college, etc .,can require certain classes to be taken on campus and if a student comes in with credit for those key classes, they are required to take additional courses in that subject to meet the requirement for the major.
Typically, the hours that transfer or can be claimed for credit easily are the University Core Curriculum classes. However, for my son’s major, some of his major classes satisfy a lot of the core curriculum classes so he has to take an additional one in one of the categories to fulfill the UCC requirement.
What also depends is what exact Dual credit and AP credit classes she has to which ones are usable for credit and usable credit towards a specific major.
If the hours are Dual Credit, those have to be transferred to whatever college she attends. AP credits do not have to be claimed and many college advisors want them to only claim certain ones that are absolutely needed for the major. Otherwise, they take up all the space for electives except upper level electives towards a major. Liberal Arts majors are about the only ones that don’t waste a lot of those credits. But again, it depends on the major.
Less academically competitive universities and majors may be less strict on how credits can/will be applied.
What will the associates degree be in?
AND AP credits don’t carry over as grades, just credit. DC classes do. It’ll read TA or TB (for Transfer A or B in the class because it’s an earned grade). Scoring well on the AP exams only determines if it’ll be credited toward degree. And as Thelma said, that will depend on major. To me, having an associates degree is not ideal coming out of high school, but again, that’s just me. I do realize it’s cost effective, but could hinder you in acceptance or changing majors if that happens. Just food for thought since it’s still early enough for your daughter.