Long time lurker, first time poster. I took 3 quarters of Russian at my local community college and am having trouble crediting it to my high school as 3 years of Russian the way it is supposed to be credited. My counselor will only give me 5 credits each for each quarter, when I need 10 quarters for each for it to count as 3 years total (30 credits). My counselor also won’t put it in as an Honors class even though that’s how a foreign language at a CC is supposed to go in as. She says because it lists as 5 units/credits on the CC transcript that’s how many she’ll put in on my high school transcript. BUT, from what I’m aware of, the CC units/credits don’t transfer 1:1 to high school. Russian 1,2,3 are all UC A-G courses, so I shouldn’t be having any trouble getting them credited each as a full year.
I am a native Russian speaker, so took the class instead of having to do foreign language at school. There have been 100’s of Russians who have done the same around here and they have never had problems getting 30 credits for taking it. I spoke with the Russian teacher at the CC and she said I was the first to have any issues.
I’ve now been to see my counselor around 5 times and I still can’t convince her to put it in properly. I also contacted the CC and they said they couldn’t help me either. I feel completely screwed, and really don’t know what to do at this point. I have taken 2 years of French so there’s no trouble with graduating, but all of the schools I’m applying to strongly “recommend” 3 years of a language. Thanks for the advice!
How do the quarters work? Did you take the equivelent of 15 weeks x 3 hours per week? So did you take 8 weeks and 6 hours per week?
If so, then you can talk to her about how a class in a quarter system is twice as long as one in a semester system…they are the equivelent number of hours so should get the same amount of credits as a semester. If not, then she is right.
Also make sure you get the syllabuses for all classes…you may need them for now or future.
At the CC, ask if a quarter class is the equivelent to a college semester class. If so, ask them to document that.That will be easier for your HS to “translate”.
At this point you should to go next to the head of guidance. In HS it is important to go through the chain of command.
If that doesn’t work out, go to the Principal. Get your parents involved if necessary.
But if you can get the quarter translated to the semester system you should be fine.
@Onyxi7 I agree that you should go through the chain of command. First step is likely the Head Counselor. Then probably someone with a title similar to Assistant Principal for Instruction/Academics. Your district may have some dual-enrollment credit policy with the CC, but finding that would probably involve searching old school board meeting minutes.
Your high school can have different policies about dual enrollment than the UC system. But, they do need to enforce the same policies for everyone, of course.
However, it is not actually necessary that your high school transcript include all the dual enrollment classes you take. It is probably an advantage from a GPA standpoint, however.
When you apply to non-UC colleges, send them both your HS transcript and your community college transcripts. They will see the courses listed. Your HS transcript probably only lists CC course numbers, which don’t really tell the colleges you are applying to what the course was about. The college transcript lists the course titles also.
When you apply to UCs and CSUs, you will select your CC and then select the courses you took from a drop-down list. The UC system has a full database of all CC courses in its application system. So, they know what the courses are worth according to the way they count things. You don’t actually send a HS transcript to the UCs and CSUs when you apply – you only send it in June after you graduate and have final senior grades.
Talked to her again, and it really does seem like just our school district has a really screwed up policy towards cc courses from quarter based cc’s. Turns out someone else who has my counselor took a comp sci course from the same cc as me (De Anza College just to make it clear) and only got 4.5 credits for each of his courses, because that’s what his cc trancript says. It’s absurd. I have documentation of 2 separate districts in this area that have a completely different policy, where the cc quarter course is treated as a full year course. I showed that and it still doesn’t matter. I plan to escalate this with someone from the district, but my fear is how to convince them? I just don’t know what it will take at this point, if they’re rejecting properly crediting any and all students who take quarter long cc courses.
@bopper On the course syllabus for Russian, each quarter is worth 60 hours. I would think this is more than enough to count as a full year course? Will it help to bring this up with the district?
@Ynotgo Do you think it makes sense to take off Russian from my HS transcript entirely if I am unable to have it credited as 30 credits total? I don’t want colleges to get the wrong idea with how many credits I really earned, and I already have 2 years of French so I’m fine with the HS requirements to graduate. Would out of state privates (ex. UPenn, BU, Northeastern, etc.) be alright if I just send it the CC transcript separately? I’m just not sure whether they’ll know how to properly convert the 5 De Anza credits into what is supposed to be 10 High School worthy credits. Those schools are super adament on having 3 years of a single language, so I don’t want to screw myself over if possible. The UC’s/CSU’s know the cc system in CA, but I’m not sure whether an east coast private will…
I’ll be honest by saying I’m not familiar with the quarter system. Is 1 quarter system equal to 1 semester class at a community college on a semester system which here regardless of if it the standard 3 credits or occasionally 4 credits (math/science primarily) counts as 1 year long high school credit? I know my daughter’s 1 semester college language class = 3 college credits at the cc and 1 full year credit for high school. (each full year class is 1 credit here) Here there would be no option to remove a cc credit from the high school transcript unless it was not taken with high school approval. I’m in Massachusetts and I know Northeastern has agreements in place with our cc so they are used to accepting cc classes but no idea about quarter system.
Whatever university you apply to will want the transcript directly from the community college and will be using the official transcript from the community college to assess your studies and to award equivalent courses and credits at their institution.
If you are worried about getting the correct number of credits at wherever you end up going, don’t because they won’t be using the hs transcript to assess your Russian credits anyway.
Usually the hs has a lot of latitude in how they want to asses credits. Three quarters isn’t actually much time when many institutions are on a semester system you’d only be halfway through Russian II. My S gets 1 hs credit for every semester class of 3 or more credits, so a 5 hr semester class is still just 1 hs credit and a 2 cr would only be .666 hs credits.
At some point you have to determine whether annoying your gc by asking her to circumvent the hs policy which she has no authority to do is worth it, when you need her attention focused on other parts of your application.
Given that the credits will be counted from the community college transcript anyway, this fight isn’t worth it in my opinion.
Really, do you want a reference letter to read: Has difficulty understanding school policy, often seeks special treatment rather than pursuing required coursework to meet objectives and complains of persecution when treated equally with the same guidelines as peers.
Any college should be able to figure out what your CC credits mean. If you are accepted, those same colleges would be considering those same credits as possible transfer credits. They will look at them as college credits, and what they represent. If you were to transfer those credits to a college with a traditional semester hour system, how many credits would they be worth? Would they translate as 3 semesters of College level Russian?
Beyond that, most colleges don’t actually care how many years you study a language, they care about the LEVEL at which you studied the language. They want you to have studied to “level 3” of a single language. AP language courses are often level 4 or 5 - and would be equivalent to the first 1 or two semesters at the college level. So your 4 classes at the Community College should be more than sufficient, just be sure to send the transcript
So a quarter is 60 hours…a regular semester would be 15 x 3=45 hours.
So it shouldn’t be a full year, but 1.5 semesters.
I would suggest continuing to go up the chain of command and try to get a parent or some adult working wiht you…if you have to go to the board of education, do so.
At our school all dual enrollment classes are ranked the same as AP (except developmental) and it is in writing in the student handbook. Do you have in writing from your high school that the language counts as honors?
The quarter system divides 30 weeks of instruction into three 10-week quarters instead of two 15-week semesters. So college Russian quarter 3 = college Russian semester 2 = college Russian year 1. (But note that California publics typically have 5 credit language courses, so a year of language would be 10 semester credits or 15 quarter credits.)
https://hs-articulation.ucop.edu/agcourselist#/list/details/4325/ lists Russian 3 as LOTE level 3, so you are fine as far as the UC foreign language requirement for frosh applicants. It should not matter whether it is listed on your high school transcript, since you will self-report both high school and college courses on your UC application (and the college courses will be counted as honors for UC purposes), and send final transcripts from both the high school and college when you matriculate. (Similar for CSU.)
For other colleges, you would send transcripts or self-report from both the high school and college, so that you will show the completion of Russian 3 (i.e. a year of college Russian) to those colleges.
@bopper I had my mom call our school district today, to which they said she could only talk to someone at my specific school. So she called my school, and they gave her the same run around as me, concluding with our VP of academics telling her what my counselor told me. The bureaucracy is mind numbing here.
As for the hours, at a semester based cc, each semester would count for one full year of credits at my high school, so the 45 hour semester you mentioned would count for 10 credits. I’m only getting 5 credits for a 60 hour long course.
@ucbalumnus So would you recommend removing it from the transcript if I can’t get the proper # of credits? Because right now on my transcript it looks like I took 1.5 years of Russian. Will the common app schools be ok if I were to just send in the De Anza transcript separately? Would they still look at that as counting for 3 years of language in terms of high school?
Thanks for all the help and advice everybody so far!! I really hope that no one else has to go through such a process but perhaps this can help others dealing with similar crediting issues.
@BuckeyeMWDSG My fundamental fear is that colleges will interpret Russian as just some extra course I took in cc for personal enrichment, and that they’ll instead focus on French which I took in school. But I only have 2 years of French.
@CTScoutmom Do you mean that the level is more important than the # of credits? Right now I have up to Russian 3 but only 15 credits, not the 30 usually associated with 3 years of a language.
Your fear is unfounded, the colleges will evaluate your courses via the community college transcript and see it is additional foreign language study no matter how they are presented on your hs transcript.
You should be worried about maintaining a positive relationship with the gc and your reputation.
Even if you think the policy is unfair, the changes you are asking for would take too long to move through a school board and not help your applications which will be due long before policy changes can be implemented. Schools don’t make policy changes midway through the college application season. The earliest a change would be implemented would be at the end of the school year to maintain conformity among all the applications that have been submitted. And even then the changes would not be retroactive but for future conversions of college credits onto hs transcripts.
Universities/Colleges are used to each hs doing things their own way and have robust application evaluation procedures to account for that.
@BuckeyeMWDSG my fear stems from the fact that I showed my trancript to a college rep from one of the safety schools I’m applying to, and she said that because it said 15 credits and not 30 it would not suffice as 3 years worth of a language. I hope she was mistaken but…
