I am going to be taking college credits in high school for dual credit at a local community college. If I have enough credits to be a sophomore in college, for example, would I be applying as a transfer student, or a freshman like everyone else. Furthermore, what are my chances of my credits transferring at all?
Freshman application still
Typically, college credit earned before high school graduation will not force you to apply as a transfer instead of frosh (applying as frosh is usually more favorable in terms of scholarships).
It is likely that your in-state public universities have articulation agreements with your community college for transfer course equivalencies. On the other hand, some private schools do not give transfer credit for dual credit course work taken on a high school campus. You need to check each school’s transfer credit policies.
You’ll be applying as a freshman. Lots of kids start college with enough dual-credit and AP credits to be classified as sophomores or even juniors, but they apply as freshmen (first time entering college). Later, those extra credits may help them get an earlier registration time, have needed prerequisites, graduate early, etc.
Whether the credits transfer depends upon the university you choose to attend. Some universities have links where you can see how credits transfer.
One thing to keep in mind: with AP credits, you can choose whether or not to accept the credit. You may decide to re-take calculus even though you got a 5 on the AP test. But sometimes with dual credit courses, if your university accepts them, you are stuck. If you took calculus as a dual credit course, you may not be able to retake it. This is the case for my sons. Their dual credit courses from a CC in Texas transferred to Texas A&M. They cannot retake those courses for the “easy A” because they already have credit for the course. They were required to submit the CC transcript to A&M, and the credits automatically showed up on their A&M transcript.
It depends on the institution. Public universities generally accept more transfer credits than private schools and the most selective schools and LACs usually accept the fewest credits. It also depends on the quarter/semester mesh and how each school counts units. A 5 credit class in a quarter based CC will often transfer to a 3 credit semester class. Schools are also more likely to accept standardized classes like English 101, Psychology 101, Spanish 202, etc. than more specialized credits that don’t have a direct match in their catalogue.
Many public universities have a transfer credit matrix on their web site where you can see what they accept and the class equivalencies from the local feeder community college. That is a good place to start.
Some schools do not allow retaking AP credit (e.g. UCSD, UCI, UCSB). Some other schools will delete your AP credit if you take the college course that covers the same or similar material.
If you are not so restricted and your university accepts the AP credit in place of one of its courses, the choice to skip or retake likely comes down to the following:
- If you will not be taking more advanced courses for which the course is a prerequisite, then skip it. This will give you a free elective to take something interesting to you instead.
- If you will be taking more advanced courses for which the course is a prerequisite, try the old final exams for the course that may be skipped, so that you can check your knowledge of the material to the college's expectations. Then you can make a more informed decision of whether to skip or retake.
- Do not assume that retaking your AP credit will result in an easy A. Some courses (perhaps those with lots of pre-meds trying to grade grub for A grades and knowing that medical schools usually do not accept AP credit) have lots of students trying the same thing, so they may make the grading curve harder than you think it will be.
UMich is pretty tricky on DE credits. You need to check their database if credits are accepted for each class.
UMich is generally very stingy with transfer credit, dual enrollment or otherwise.
http://www.ugadmiss.umich.edu/TCE/Public/CT_TCESearch.aspx
On this transfer database, my community college is not listed. should I assume that they will not accept any credits?
Assume that you won’t know until after you matriculate – definitely a risk, especially since Michigan historically has not been generous. Plan for the worst case of getting no subject credit.
It may just be that they have never had any requests from that community college. Is it near the university? Where my kids go, the university has all the local CCs listed, but if you want transfer credit from somewhere not local, they won’t have it listed unless someone has asked to transfer a specific course, and then that will be the only course listed. There is usually a process for requesting transfer credit from any other school.
It is likely not accepted if not on the list. Are those classes actually at your high school? In that case, they are likely not counted at UMich.
The classes would be at the college, after school. After seeing these comments, I’m questioning if this is even worth it. Would I be better off spending the time at college self studying for some AP tests? The reason I’m doing this is to hopefully save some money.
Dual Credit is a tricky topic because there are colleges that won’t accept credits from some CCs. This could be due to a lack of academic equivalency in their eyes or a lack of knowledge about the CC etc. If you are thinking about applying to schools where your CC isn’t nearby (e.g. you’re in NY and want to go to Michigan), you might want to think about doing AP instead.
@Hailee8, I see some replies discussing Michigan, but I don’t see where you mention Michigan. Are you specifically asking about transferring credits to Michigan?
From another thread:
These are the colleges that I am interested in:
McGill University: Dept of Science
U of Toronto
U of Mass- Amherst
Penn State: University Park
U of IL: Urbana-Champaign
University of Pittsburgh
IL State University
The thing to do would be to look on each school’s website for transfer credits accepted and call with specific questions if you still have them after reading the posted materials.
example:
http://admissions.psu.edu/info/future/transfer/credit/
@Barfly I am interested in Michigan, (but not as much as some others). I like to keep my options open.
Thanks. Just noticed several replies mentioning Michigan. I know nothing about Michigan, but just about transfer credits in general. Good luck!
I brought up the case with UMich because I saw @saintfan saying public school would transfer more credits than private. I know a girl from California with around 2 years of DE credits including Calc4. None of them are accepted at UMich so she started with Calc 1 again in freshmen year.