It depends on the community college. My kid is taking classes at CC. They are taught by real profs, many also teaching adjunct at high end private schools in town. All those classes are accepted for full credit at our well regarded flagship. He’s been invited and been able to take some honors classes too.
DE is free in our state and the kid has gotten much smaller classes sizes and personal attention at the CC then he would have at the larger school DE options local to us.
Definitely do your homework on programs available to you and start small in something your kid will find success in because grades can follow you forever.
Both of my high school kids are taking DE at a local community college, and it has been a wonderful experience. The courses are challenging, and they are learning quite a bit. They also like and respect their professors.
Great preparation for college, and if both kids stay in state, the courses are guaranteed to transfer.
Also, I can’t believe how inexpensive it is - $50 per credit hour!
Also make sure you are taking courses in Math, English, Science, Social Studies, and maybe Foreign Language…I did an alumni interview for a student who wanted to be a nurse and was touting her DE courses in sociology, psychology and the like but was not taking any science classes as a senior. She was not admitted. She thought just the fact that she was taking any college classes was impressive.
@bopper Would a student need to take DE math and science courses if he/she were already taking AP science at high school? Wouldn’t AP courses show rigor in those areas?
Students taking college/DE math and science courses while in high school are often those who want to take more advanced math and science courses than the AP courses that they completed in 11th grade or earlier (e.g. +2 math student completes AP calculus BC in 11th grade and wants to take multivariable calculus, linear algebra, and differential equations).
There’s going to be variation in what’s typical for DE. In my kid’s district, (free community college) DE is primarily for kids who aren’t on track for AP classes, but plan to go to college. The recommended DE track senior year math, for instance, is College Algebra followed by Pre-Calc.
That’s the problem…this particular student wasn’t taking AP science at HS. She (and her parents) thought that College Course > HS course…not realizing that for nursing (at least a our college) you should be taKing AP science( or DE science)
DE was a win win in our family. All 3 of our kids took the classes at our hs. The college profs came to the school. You could leave and take additional classes at the CC campus, but our kids didn’t want to miss out on their hs experience.
The CC is affiliated with the public university they went to so no problems with the classes not transferring. It also allowed them to take a lighter college load during the regular semesters and forego going to summer school to graduate in 4 years.
The only bad thing was they took their electives for DE, so when they went to college they were left with a lot of hard core classes with no fluff to break up the load, but as stated above they could take less of a load so they had more time to put into those hard classes.
My daughter did all dual enrollment on a college campus two years and is a freshman in college now. Most of her professors taught classes at other colleges - including good colleges mentioned regularly on cc. They often had the same textbook, syllabus, assignments and tests. The class sizes at both the college and high school were in the 20s with an occasional smaller class. While a state school would have accepted most to all classes my daughter is attending a private school which gave her credit for all classes as well. Some are just free electives which aren’t really needed. She started as a junior though it is really a freshman with advanced standing. She didn’t go for an associates since there were classes she wasn’t interested in but had just as many credits so it made no difference. She chose the college honor society and was able to wear her stole to high school graduation. All de classes and books are free
My daughter’s high school guidance counselor and the high school de guidance counselor made sure that she knew she had to 1 complete high school graduation requirements 2 take classes needed for college admissions and then 3 classes of interest providing they weren’t considered developmental classes. She loved the independent schedule and not having classes on Fridays the last 3 semesters. The high school did require my daughter to attend a few special things at the high school mostly things for college planning. For those she primarily sat in with an AP ELA class based on her availability.
My daughter was able to participate in clubs and sports at the college and high school. If she was free she could stop by the high school to have lunch etc . She was able to ask a high school ELA teacher to help look at her common ap essay but she chose to ask her college ELA teacher. At our school de is for all levels of students. We have kids who go with a high school teacher and take special classes in culinary arts. We have top students aiming for top schools and anywhere in between.
It would be possible to get a bs in 2 years if that was the goal but realistically we are thinking 3 years which will give her time for a double major in accounting/finance, two grad classes (most allowed) and completion of the honors program though time will tell what she decides to do. She has finished I think all but 1 general ed and will have all her business general ed finished after this semester except for the senior capstone type course.
Probably yes it is challenging if it is at a 4-year college, but no if it is at a community college.
My son was an average student at a competitive high school, and chose to go to a community
college(one of the best ones in California, and has the highest transfer rate to a top UC school).
He says his AP class at his high school was much harder than his current community college
classes.
There are many variables in DE and AP comparison. For our local district, top students do AP as it’s more rigorous and helps with credit at good schools. Lower achievement tier does DE as it’s easier, sounds better and gets them credit at state schools. Only exceptions are advance math courses not offered at school.
My older two sons, both homeschooled, did dual enrollment at the local CC.
Our eldest son was parttime dual enrolled from 7th-12th grade. We decided he should double up on CC classes and AP exams since we didn’t know where he would be going and what credit he might get. He ended up taking 6 AP exams, 5 of which were STEM and in the same area as CC classes: Calc BC, Physics B (at the time), both Physics C exams, Stats, and AP Literature.
He took the AP Lit class in person with other homeschoolers and he agreed that it was the best and hardest A he earned. He easily got As in his CC classes through Differential Equations and 3 semesters of Calc-based physics.
He audited 3 upper-division physics courses for free at the local state university. Since cost was an issue for us, CC courses made total sense since, at the time, they were only $11 a unit. And it didn’t matter that he got no credit for his upper-division work in physics; he just wanted to stay engaged since he didn’t want to graduate early.
He was admitted to all his schools including Princeton, Caltech & MIT. Interestingly, he got transfer credit for all his math courses through Dif. Equations and 2 semesters of Arabic at MIT even though those Arabic courses were used to meet high school requirements. Probably because MIT doesn’t require a foreign language, they allowed those classes to transfer in.
He only got credit for one AP exam, Calc BC, because of MIT’s various policies. I haven’t a clue whether any of the grades from his CC classes counted towards his MIT GPA; I’d guess probably not.
I will say that colleges do take context into consideration. They don’t expect all kids to be able to afford to take university classes in high school, but I agree that the quality of university, CC, and AP courses can vary greatly from institution to institution.