Dual Enrollment questions

Applying to College
1

<p>I am entering my senior year soon and I have a few questions. I live in Florida and I am hoping to get into a University here. I am planning on taking Dual Enrollment courses at a community college. I am taking Comp 1 first semester and then Comp 2 second. Also, I am taking intermediate algebra first semester and College Algebra second semester. </p>

<p>I'm pretty much an average student. I don't take AP, but I do take honors. My gpa is 3.4 weighted and 3.2 unweighted. I got some c's in freshman and sophomore year, but I did very good my junior year. I'm trying to raise it up but I don't know if Dual Enrollment will do so. I'm not that great at writing essays and I am afraid I will fail. My SAT and ACT scores are pretty low, but I am retaking and I'm taking prep classes for that. </p>

<p>Will Dual Enrollment look good on applications? Should I just take honors classes instead? What will be better for me? </p>

<p>Or, if I decide to do to a community college will it help me?</p>

2

<p>Getting to the real heart of your question, the answer is that being able to show you are enrolled in a community college in some courses is not going to make up for a weak GPA or test score. Having such courses doesn’t really mean much for admission without grades in them and for at least some Florida colleges (e.g., UFlorida) the decision for most applicants will be made based on grades through junior year. Also, you likely face a real issue, considering current GPA, as to whether you will be able to do well in such courses at this time. In addition, I am not sure what is meant by “intermediate algebra” but if that is essentially Algebra 2 at the high school level, the issue becomes whether you have already taken it and are just effectively repeating a high school course, which would definitely add nothing to your application.</p>

3

<p>I’m entering senior year in Florida and taking dual classes. Dual enrollment is generally easier than AP classes but harder than honors, I have taken dual world religions and it was a boatload of writing. I’m a bad writer but got an A. If you get A’s or B’s the classes will bring up your overall GPA.</p>

4

<p>Hi, I’m also in Florida and have taken dual enrollment courses for 3 semesters so far. I think dual enrollment is a great experience, and I have loved my courses, the professors and the students.</p>

<p>In my opinion, dual enrollment courses vary a lot in terms of difficulty. Many CCs offer honors programs in addition to regular-level courses, and honors courses will of course be more difficult than regular classes. Since the courses you are looking at are among the most popular at CCs, you will probably have several professors to choose from. You can go on ratemyprofessors.com to find out which professors are harder than others.</p>

<p>Keep in mind that in order to do dual enrollment, you must have SAT scores above 440 in each section or a similar ACT composite (I forget exactly what it is) or you’ll be required to take the CPT exam which is administered by the college and based on the College Board’s AccuPlacer test, which you can study for on the CB’s website.</p>

<p>If you get good grades, dual enrollment will definitely help your GPA, because dual enrollment is weighted higher than regular classes. If you do poorly, however, it will remain on your permanent record and follow you when you go to college. You can drop a course within the first couple weeks without consequence, but you don’t EVER want to withdraw from a course after that unless you are certain to fail the course, no matter what you do. If you get a D, F, or W in a dual-enrollment course, you will most likely blow your chances of getting into UF or FSU unless you have a really good explanation.</p>

<p>However, you should be able to do pretty well in dual enrollment. Essay writing is a skill you can work on and will probably improve in Comp 1. My college campus has an extensive writing and math tutoring center where you can sit down with a tutor and go over each paper for as long as necessary. Most CC professors are also very willing to help you if you need it. In general, a well-organized and structured paper that uses correct citation and is free from grammatical and factual errors is at least “B”-worthy for most professors.</p>

<p>If you’ve taken Algebra 2 at high school, you should probably be able to jump right into College Algebra if your test scores qualify you. I’m homeschooled and I took an advanced algebra course using a College Algebra textbook immediately after Algebra 2 and understood everything.</p>

<p>All dual enrollment classes transfer straight to any Florida public college or university. I know people who have significantly reduced the time to get a bachelor’s degree through dual enrollment.</p>

5

<p>Looks like “intermediate algebra” and “college algebra” are like high school algebra 2, which would not be especially impressive to look at nor particularly useful to take as dual enrollment if your high school offers a worthwhile course in algebra 2. What math have you completed in high school?</p>

6

<p>^I would say Intermediate Algebra is pretty equivalent to high school Algebra 2, but College Algebra is definitely more advanced. After taking Algebra 2 I used my local community college’s College Algebra book and although it wasn’t too difficult, it was mostly new material. Keep in mind: Florida high schools require 4 years of math, so it would be nearly impossible to make it to a FL college without having taken Algebra 2. Yet the majority of students take College Algebra. To me that shows it’s different.</p>

7

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<p>Or does it mean that the quality of instruction in high school was so poor that most students have to repeat it as a remedial course in college before going on to true college level math (calculus or statistics)?</p>

<p>When I went to high school, the standard expectation was that a college bound student could take four years of math in high school (algebra 1, geometry, algebra 2, precalculus / trigonometry) and then take calculus as a college freshman, if needed for his/her major. Having to take any precalculus math in college (including “college algebra”, trigonometry, etc.) was considered remedial to make up for poor high school math instruction (unfortunately, this seems to be very common at all but the most selective universities). Some (<10%) students were advanced and took calculus as high school seniors; a very few were advanced enough to take calculus as high school juniors.</p>

8

<p>College Algebra is not considered a remedial course. At the CC where I dual enroll there are two true remedial math courses, Basic Algebra 1 and 2, which don’t even get college credit, and another course, Intermediate Algebra, which is a prerequisite for certain low-scoring students for College Algebra, which counts for elective credit but doesn’t fulfill the math core requirement. College Algebra, along with college classes in Trigonometry AND Precalculus are prerequisites for Calculus regardless of what high school courses you take (you can only get out of Trigonometry by successfully completing the high school course). Also, College Algebra is offered as an Honors course, despite the fact that getting into the Honors program requires a 3.5 GPA, which I doubt any student who truly needed remedial courses could achieve. Only a real math genius, who scored nearly perfect on the math placement test, could go straight to Calculus. College Algebra is a perfectly respectable college-level math course.</p>

9

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<p>Which speaks to the pathetic state of K-12 math instruction in the US.</p>

<p>In the US, even the nominal standard sequence of math courses in high school for college-bound students has them completing precalculus and trigonometry in 12th grade, so that they are theoretically ready for calculus as college freshmen.*</p>

<p>That “college algebra” and other pre-calculus math courses are considered “normal” for college students to take says a lot about the quality of math instruction in high schools, since college students theoretically have had those courses in high school already.</p>

<p>*Here is the sequence:</p>

<p>9th grade: algebra 1
10th grade: geometry
11th grade: algebra 2
12th grade: precalculus/trigonometry
college freshman: calculus, if needed for the major</p>

<p>Some students are advanced and take each course a year early (taking calculus in high school). The weak students in math may be a year behind, or skip precalculus/trigonometry in high school because their colleges require only 3 years of high school math, only to find that they need to take it as a remedial course in college.</p>

10

<p>So the majority of students, who don’t need to take a ridiculously hard course like calculus for their major but who still have to take two math courses to graduate, are dumb or not adequately prepared for college if they take College Algebra? Every single student who graduates from high school is expected to be immediately prepared to take calculus?</p>

<p>Know something funny? My college also requires two semesters of Composition–strange given that Florida requires 4 years of English don’t you think? Then there’s the semester of history or government, both of which are required by Florida public high schools. Similarly, most students take college biology and Spanish, despite having already taken them in high school…</p>

<p>A college course is different than a high school one. Even when the subject sounds similar, the actual course might be more advanced or more in-depth. The College Algebra textbook I used was absolutely more advanced than what I learned in Algebra 2. It even included matrix theory and other advanced concepts that aren’t part of high school Algebra 2.</p>

<p>Besides, if Florida schools are so bad that students only have to take College Algebra because their high school classes were crap, what makes you think the OP’s school is any better?</p>

11

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<p>Many of the most popular majors do require calculus. These include business, economics, and biology. Granted, they often allow an easier version of calculus than the one taken by math, physics, and engineering majors, but it is calculus nonetheless.</p>

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<p>Not all Florida high schools’ math courses are of poor quality. The University of Florida does expect that some students will be able to take first semester freshman calculus (MAC 2233 or 2311) without any additional courses beyond high school preparation, but requires a sufficiently high score of an algebra and trigonometry placement test: <a href=“ONE.UF”>ONE.UF;

12

<p>All Florida colleges allow students to test out of the prerequisites to calculus, just as it is possible to CLEP out of certain required courses. That does not mean every single student is expected to be able to obtain high enough test scores to avoid college-level courses, just that certain very high scoring students are able to.</p>