<p>I wanted to offer some experience from a parent's perspective on dual enrollment. I can only speak for Florida as it may be different in other states. My S graduated last year and is part of the class of 2018. He is a very good student and went to a High School that takes pride on its IB program. </p>
<p>During his freshman year in HS he was recruited for the IB program. We all discussed the idea and his mother and I were all for it but he didn't want any part of the IB schedule. He said he knew upperclassman that complained about the time needed to do the work which limited some from entering sports, after school EC's and part time jobs. He pleaded with us to look into dual enrollment as an alternative. </p>
<p>I did my due diligence and researched the DE program and was quite surprised to find out that students can take college courses at the local community college at no charge. We discussed it and decided to take the DE route. He took a test to enter the DE program and started at the beginning of his junior year. His HS required that he go to HS for one class first period and then he went to the local CC to take his courses. My S continued to play HS sports and he graduated HS with 38 college credits. </p>
<p>Keep in mind if your child chooses DE this will be the start of their college education including their GPA. I only recommend this for a responsible self driven student. Also, since the student is in college they will obviously have much more independent time during the day. The college experience they gain dealing with professors and understanding the college dynamic is invaluable for their future college challenges.</p>
<p>DE does take your student away from HS all day which means their interaction with their friends is limited. We were forced to get our S a vehicle prior to his junior year of HS so that he could drive to CC and his sporting activities. In many ways your student is finished with HS before their junior year, this may not appeal to many students or parents. Also, besides the one class he took in the morning at HS he was finished with school a month earlier than his HS counterparts which helps with summer jobs and/or volunteer work that helps with the college resume and needed for Bright Futures. </p>
<p>DE students create their own course schedule and are dependent on the HS Guidance Counselor knowing the students requirements to graduate HS. Also, as I mentioned earlier this starts their college career and your student has to know or have a good idea of what their college major might be so that the courses they take are not wasted credits that wouldn't apply to their future major. This takes perceptive juggling to fulfill the students HS graduation requirements and their eventual college major.</p>
<p>My S did have friends in the IB program and we heard constant complaining about how time consuming the program is. After talking to his IB friends once they graduated I didn't see any preferences in college acceptances and offers for honors at the major state universities. </p>
<p>All of the student programs are viable options and it depends which is best for your student.</p>
<p>CollegeInformed. Thanks for your information. I too am a FL resident. We rejected the IB program as meant commuting to a different HS, and the curriculum was not to my son’s liking. </p>
<p>I’ve known only 1 student who did the DE as you described. My son took various classes at the local U, often in evening and one 3 hour class on Saturday morning. He took courses he could not get at HS, e.g. math, Macroecon, & Latin. The HS would only pay for 3 classes a year; the rest were on my dime. Still, he was with HS friends thru the morning and lunch. I found at after the fact that he attended physics class at the U only 3x: 1st class, midterm, and final. The class met in the middle of the day, and it was the only option. </p>
<p>My D’s friend from California did DE and obtained a lot of credits from a community college including Calc1, Calc2, etc. However, she found out after committed to attend UMich that many credits from that CC are not acknowledged by UMich. As a result, she needs to start from Calc 1 in freshmen again. If she took AP Calc BC instead of DE, she would be able to skip Calc 1 and Calc 2 and place into Calc 3 directly. So, before you do DE, check your target school(s) to see if those credits will be transferable or not. </p>
<p>At our Florida HS, the DE classes were taught at the high school. I did not think the difficulty was as high as AP classes.</p>
<p>My nephew also went to a Florida high school and entered UF with 40 credits from AP exams.</p>
<p>Also, my daughter was 15 when she started junior year. She couldn’t have driven herself to classes, and I wouldn’t have wanted a 15 year old on a college campus. She wasn’t mature enough, and I wanted her with her high school friends. I’m having trouble with her on a college campus at 17. I really am a believer that college, even community college, is for college aged people.</p>
<p>It’s always good to look for options. In California, my D started in dual enrollment at age 15 (Junior year.) She was part of a competitive high school community college hybrid program. She took honors level English and History for 3 hours a day on the college campus but with only her fellow high schoolers (they also did high school things like put on a talent show, go on college field trips, have a prom, ect.) Everything else she took through the college and was rarely in a class with another high schooler. </p>
<p>She’s 17 now and 2500 miles away at the university. The school she chose would only take 7 transfer classes max and only a few actually cancelled out university requirements but honestly, D didn’t go to duel enrollment to shorten her university time. If she’d wanted that she would have gone to a UC and graduated in 2 years. Nope, went to a private LAC that doesn’t even take many AP’s for credit. She went DE because she needed more challenge and control. DE gave that to her. Do I think it’s for everyone? No. I know California CC’s have a higher reputation so I can’t remark on class quality in other states. Not all “middle colleges” are the same. D’s was for high achievers but I’ve read about other programs that are more for under-achievers at risk of not completing high school at all. Just depends on your kid, what they want and what programs are available to you.</p>
<p>As I said this is just to inform parents on how the process works. I wish I had this information prior to making our decision. Also, all Florida public U’s accept dual enrollment classes (with grade C or better), I can’t speak for OOS schools.</p>
<p>My S excelled in his DE courses and he loved being among college age students, in fact many of the students were other DE kids. As a parent I think it is only a guess when comparing difficulty between DE, AP and IB. I do know that all programs do count the same for weighted GPA. </p>
<p>Also, students taking AP and IB only get college credit when passing their sanctioned tests with certain scores. We were lucky our local CC is a fantastic learning institution and his DE courses were engaging and demanding.</p>
<p>There is no doubt that our son had to grow up and be responsible earlier then expected. Every situation and student are different. </p>
<p>Almost every college accepts AP credits. However, as of 3 years ago, I found that many selective colleges did not accept DE credits, particularly if the classes were taken inside a high school building. DE classes can be good for students who are not attending selective colleges and who doubt they could score sufficiently high on an AP test. It is a way to earn many credits at no or low cost.</p>
<p>I took nine dual-enrollment classes at a state university when I was a senior in high school. I took them for both high school and college credit, they appeared on my high school transcript, and my private college gave me transfer credit for all of them. I get the idea that dual-enrollment classes are more likely to transfer if they were taken on a college campus for a letter grade and not used to meet high school graduation requirements. (I emailed a couple of colleges about transferring my credits when I was applying, and one of them also had a problem with the fact that my classes appeared on my high school transcript, even though I had already fulfilled all my requirements with high school classes.)
I definitely agree with this. It’s a lot different from taking AP classes.
In most cases it’s just part of the day, but it depends on how many classes you take. It can be difficult to take dual-enrollment classes and meet high school graduation requirements at the same time. My school considered one college credit hour to be worth 0.2 high school credits (because of the lower number of hours spent in a classroom), which means it would have taken two college classes to meet a one-credit graduation requirement. </p>
<p>Charliesc, not every school accepts AP credits, nor credits from local U’s. My son got absolutely no credit for either. Had he attended the flagship, he would have entered as a junior. The more selective the college, the less willing they were to give credit for AP or U classes.</p>
<p>Hs college required individual class tests. Only strong candidates would attempt these exams. </p>
<p>Not only not all school accepts AP credits, many schools would not offer credit to all AP subjects and have different score requirements. One should really check each school for their AP credit policy. Even within the same university, the AP credit policy may be different for engineering school versus LSA for instance. The situation for AP credit is not much different from CC credits but it would be easier to find out.</p>
<p>My D’s DE classes were taught at the high school by teachers that had additional training/certification from the community college and a graduate degree. In at least a few classes, it was co-taught with AP, and just had final exams instead of AP test. Most classes were weighted the same as AP classes, but some of the more technical weren’t weighted at all (web design). Her school only weighted AP and some DE - no “honors” or pre-AP weight. She started taking DE as a Freshman. She had a college transcript showing 36 hours at graduation. She received credit for 28 hours at her good but not highly selective school. It has offered her a lot of freedom in course selection at college, and I think it was a great program for her. I think it would be less useful to someone applying to a very selective school (where the credits might not transfer) or isn’t interested in technical/art classes.</p>
<p>This seems to be a significant drawback for Michigan compared to many other public universities, at least for students who take college courses while in high school or transfer students. Michigan’s transfer credit articulation listings indicate that it gives little subject credit for common transfer courses, whether from community colleges or four year schools. Had your daughter’s friend had gone to a UC or CSU, s/he would likely have gotten subject credit for her calculus courses and been able to start in a more advanced math course.</p>
<p>^ Yes, she would have gotten full credit if staying in California for college. However, there are many students transfering to UMich every year even with their stringent credit transfer requirement. I did take some credits in a CC before. I fully understand why some colleges would set restriction on credit transfer particularly for those schools they are not familiar with.</p>
<p>There is a huge benefit of taking classes that stuent wants to avoid taking in college. College time is much more busy time than living at home and being taken care by your family. D. took care of History requirement this way, the class that she has the hardest time understanding and absorbing material and it would take enourmous time at college. She knew that going for pre-med would require a college GPA as close to 4.0 as possible. This class could easily ruin it for her. She spent enourmous effort and time in HS to make sure that she got an A in this college History class (with the great help from her father who would not be available at college). More so, she even took SAT II in History (I have no idea why). She got an A and did not need to take History at college any more because she completed her major requirement. It was sigh a relief with the comment “No more History class in my life!!!”.<br>
That probably was also important in her admissions to 3 combined bs/md programs (at state schools that are not selective, but we heard that admissions to bs/md is as selective as Ivy’s). She ended up attending in the program that had only 10 spots, which had great number of applicants for each of them.</p>
<p>The DE program is different in every state and probably even a bit different in every community college. My chidlren have all taken community college classes while in high school as this was the best option for them as homeschooled students. Yes, there was pros and cons to this and like everything, we as parents must research as much as possible.</p>
<p>For three of my children, they were able to seamlessly transfer their comm college credits to their four year college. The comm college credits did not factor into their GPA at the four year college. My #4 is still in high school, so we will see what his experience will be. The college we just visited said that they’d accept the credits with no problem. He can use them to test out of some classes. </p>
<p>@MiamiDAP - my son (a history major) had a similar experience when he discovered that the math class he took at comm college would fulfil the math requirement at his 4 year college - No more Math in my life!!! Amusingly, he married an accountant. </p>
<p>Yes, they did need a car to get to campus. I drove them to the school until they had a car of their own. For all of them, it was a positive experience. </p>
<p>It really does depend on where you live. A friend in TX has a D who had her AA degree before her HS diploma, got accepted at a private, selective college in that state with full credit for the CC classes. She began there as a junior, graduated at 20 and is now a Ph.D student. In our area, some kids take one or two CC classes, others do it FT to avoid the high cost of college and so that they can attend one of the state directionals with full credit for the CC classes. I think some of them still guarantee admission with a good record at a CC-the UW main campus no longer does this, but it’s how my H was able to afford college since CC classes in HS here are free.</p>
<p>Funny about never having to take a certain subject again-my niece did that with math and went on to become a foreign language teacher (French and Spanish). But her district needed math teachers so she got a Master’s in…math. Shhe now teaches math in HS as well, AND was recently hired by her local CC to teach…math.</p>
<p>My daughter brought with her a years worth of credit to her 4 year college and then went on to get her degree in accounting in 2 1/2 years. She’ll graduate with her MBA at age 21 in the same time it took all of her friends to graduate with an undergraduate degree (4 years). This worked well for her. It would not work well for everyone - including one of her siblings. They are all so very different!</p>
<p>I agree that each family needs to research the benefits of AP, IB and DE and choose what fits best with their child’s interests and future potential college plans.</p>
<p>In our state, DE is tuition free. State gives one year of high school credit for each semester college course. Student attends on college campus with real college professors, and gains the confidence of adjusting to college life while still having a safety net living at home. You do have to research to see if the colleges you are applying to accept DE credits. </p>
<p>For AP, students have convenience of taking classes on high school campus. You must take AP exams all in the same crunch time at end of the year, and if you don’t get a passing score, you don’t earn credit. Some colleges will accept a 3, some insist on a 4 or 5 score. And it costs extra money to register for each AP exam you need to take.</p>
<p>Our D chose DE, and the biggest unexpected benefit was for ME, the mom, to see that D was quite capable of handling 11 college hours each semester, 4.0 GPA at a 4 year college, while juggling her high school course, 24 hrs/week fast food job, and 10 hrs/week at dance company. I could see her as a college student, know with confidence she was ready for the next step. That benefit was priceless.</p>
<p>And all my son’s APS and College courses counted for nought where he went to college. Had he attended a FL college, he would have entered as a junior. No regrets. The local U gave him far better professors and stimulation than he would have received in regular HS classes. </p>
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