How do colleges view dual enrollment senior year? My daughter is a top student and wants to take a few courses at our local community college. The courses would be in gen eds like sociology. She would still be taking AP Anatomy & Physiology and Calc AB, english and other required courses at the high school. She is interested in majoring in Nursing.
I think it’s fine, as long as your high school is okay with it and you’re taking the required classes for graduation and and you make sure you have all of the “recommended” classes that colleges want to see.
I wouldn’t do it expecting to get your gen ed requirements out of the way…that’s not going to fly at a lot of schools.
Has she got all AP sciences? Is AP A&P a real thing? Can you point that out to me on the AP site?
I would only choose A&P and DE if she has absolutely exhausted her AP sciences and AP core classes if she is aimed at a BSN,.
I think that would be fine for her if she REALLY wants. Assuming that she meets all of her graduation requirements, and her school allows/accepts it, she can. She should be sure, however, that this is not too difficult for her; if the added pressure affects her high school GPA, this is going to bite her. An AP course load combined with DE is not for everybody, and senior year courses are probably going to be harder than her previous years; I have friends who were single-handedly destroyed by AP Calc AB because they were not prepared for it from Pre-Calc. The same may apply if she is taking an AP science she has been avoiding for the past few years (common in seniors, which in my case was AP Chem).
Do you know what colleges she is looking at? Feel free to ask them about this, and see if they will A) accept this DE selection as credit towards her goal, and B) would recommend it (they probably won’t, but still ask). Consider this into your consideration.
As Sybylla pointed out, AP A&P is not ACTUALLY AP; it’s probably just called that at the school because they want it to be an honors class. Make sure your D knows that, too.
It is good to demonstrate course rigor. Nevertheless, you may want to check for transfer credit policies of schools you D may be interested in. In some schools, they may be very picky on the courses/colleges on transferable credits. In that cases, students may still need to take AP exam in order to get those credits.
Sybylla -Thanks for your reply, my mistake - it’s A&P Honors, not AP. And no, not all AP sciences, honors only. She has 3 AP History courses, 2 AP English, honors up to trig 11th grade (Calc AB next year), and Honors Chem & Bio
MON824 -
Thanks for your reply. I think she’ll be ok with Calc AB. I woud have liked to see her take a statistics and another science, but she’s stubborn.
So where I am, HS DE is not the most rigorous pathway, it is more vocational, if she is aimed at your local 4 yr where DE credits transfer and she already has a pathway planned out, that might be great. If she is looking at competitive entry, it might need some finessing. Is her target 4 yr direct entry and local?
Sybella -
Yes she is planning on a 4 yr BSN degree, not at the local community college where she’d take the DE classes. Her guidance counselor suggested she go that route and I thought it might be questionable, but my daughter really wants to be out of the high school. Shes kind of stubborn and won’t listen to me. The only thing she might take if she stays at the high school full time would be maybe a statistics and another science (AP Chem or Physics Honors). She is planning on applying ED to some schools and a few others early in the fall. What do you think? She’s 7th in her class of about 500, 4.0 weighted gpa, SAT’s 1220 (taking them again tomorrow, she gets nerved up on standardized tests, did a 1280 on PSAT’s,didn’t study for either one, is studying for this one). Also is a 4 yr varsity field hockey player, 2 yr track, 2 yr band, ski instructor, lots of volunteering - sunday school teacher, youth mission trips, NHS etc etc.
I think that would be fine for her.
My advice is to make sure they’re classes she can handle, and make sure they’ll transfer to whatever colleges she might want to attend. We’ve found that a handful of colleges don’t allow what they call “double dipping,” so if a dual enrollment class is used to meet ANY high school grad requirement (say, American Literature, Composition/Writing, Political Science, or U.S. History), they won’t give credit for it at all. Also, some colleges won’t give credit if the DE class is from a community college, or they’ll just give general elective credits instead of counting them as required core classes. As long as you check ahead of time and make sure that the DE classes will transfer, though, it’s a great opportunity!
My kids are taking DE classes at a state university, and are focusing on taking core classes so they won’t have to take them next year.
Update: So far, DE doesn’t seem to have been a negative for admissions. So far, my daughter has been accepted to Bloomsburg, Penn State main campus and U of Delaware for Nursing; still waiting to hear from the other schools she applied to
In some states, like Georgia, DE courses transfer to the state university 100%. Many selective LA colleges will accept all such courses that fit their curricula (i.e., for which there are equivalent courses). Some colleges will transfer only DE courses that do not also count for HS graduation requirements. My D spent her entire senior year taking DE courses at a local state university. Also great transition to college.
The other thing we’ve recently run across is that when private colleges calculate weighted GPAs for scholarships and admissions, they do not tend to give any extra weight to dual enrollment classes. We were surprised by that. We’d thought that college courses were supposed to be given more weight than AP courses. Instead, they’re being counted the same as regular non-honors courses at the high school. That means an A in a dual enrollment course can actually bring a student’s weighted GPA down if he/she also has some A grades in AP courses.
@MandolinMom the classes she is taking at the community college aren’t replacing any AP classes, she’s taking them in place of regular elective classes, but what you brought up is good to remember
DE is not a vocational pathway everywhere. Those credits transfer great to our state universities including the flagship. There are kids that choose that path for vocational reasons. But most in our state are high achieving high schoolers ready to move on. It’s also free in our state so i’s been a no brainer for us even if all credits don’t transfer.
My D did dual enrollment at a four year public school and had no problem with college acceptances. However, it was at a four year university not a cc. Also we were targeting mostly flagship universities and some bigger privates. My D was accepted to all honor programs. We checked the transfer equivalency tables beforehand. I concur with the other poster it is a no brainer when its basically free. Only issue I found with it was the difficulty in arranging college visits or scholorship interviews as attendance policies were ruthless. Also, scheduling classes can be a nightmare so we nixed it for our youngest.
Make sure you are taking core classes (Math, science, english, social studies, foreign lang) be it at HS or DE.
AP classes are more flexible for getting credit if you do wellon the AP exams.
DE credits transfer quite well to instate colleges.
I do alumni interviews and had a student who was taking DE classes, but in psychology and sociology…and not taking Science despite the fact they wanted to be a nurse. Her family seemed to think that any college class was superior to HS classes. She was outright denied.
So if she is taking the core classes and wants to take electives at DE, go for it. But the core classes are more important whereever they are taken
Dual enrollment is a wonderful way for kids to experience what a real college class is like vs. AP. Colleges like to see the student is taking the most rigorous program that the student can handle. Just be sure you can do well because the GPA follows you.