Need help with dual enrollment question

<p>I posted this on admissions but want to get parent input too. Thanks...</p>

<p>I have a question about how colleges handle GPAs from dual enrollment. Hopefully some of the CC experts can help!</p>

<p>I think that most colleges take your high school transcript and recompute your high school gpa, based on their criteria, particularly when it comes to computing a weighted gpa. When the colleges recompute the high school gpa, will they weight a DE class? I know that most colleges will weight an AP class, an Honors class, and an IB class. Some will weight a gifted class, if you can get them to understand what it is. As we all know, if you are a straight A student, the more weighted classes you have the higher your GPA will be. So, are the colleges going to include the DE class in their recomputation of a high school gpa and if so, will they weight it? Or does it just show up as college credit and it is excluded from the high school gpa recomputation? If they exclude it, maybe a student is better off taking the gifted class and lobbying for them to weight it as they would an AP or honors class. If they include it in the gpa and weight it, then wouldn’t it be better to take the dual enrollment class?</p>

<p>The class in question is 11th grade trig. The school does not offer AP in this subject only AP Calc in 12th gr. I just don’t know which is better to take: gifted trig or dual enrollment from a local community college. (they are using the same textbook but different teachers) thanks for any input!!</p>

<p>Every college to which you apply will handle this differently, so you need to check each one's website individually. Many use unweighted only. Please do be aware that most colleges don't offer credit for dual enrollment courses.</p>

<p>Thanks Zoosermom. I guess I am mainly concerned with how this would impact my GPA computation by a college.</p>

<p>Only the specific college can tell you that as they all do it differently.</p>

<p>The trig class probably won't transfer as college credit, since it's not a university-level course. I wouldn't worry about this, I would take the course that best suits your schedule and academic needs.</p>

<p>They all do it differently, as has been said. You might want to check how your HS handles as far as class rank, etc. My kids HS double weights dual enrollment. In other words, an AP class is 5 credits. A CC dual enrollment class is 10 credits. An A in either class is 5.0. If you take the DE class and get an A, the A is weighted twice the A in the AP.<br>
Thus, your class rank jumps over others who took AP.<br>
Agreed that you shouldn't worry about the college credit. All colleges will handle that differently, particularly for a trig class.</p>

<p>I can't speak to Trig specifically, but my S had many dual credit classes. For gpa purposes, Each college he sent transcript to counted his college class exactly as a high school class. What we did shortly after transcript was send a "confirming letter" directly to his admiss counselor to see that his transcript had arrived. In that letter we mentioned that many of his credits were actually DE classes obtained in college, not high school, and highlighted some of them. Then the letter said something like- I hope you will see the student has a XXXgpa including college courses he took while a sophmore in high school. Some counselors had noticed, others didn't. Some just look at the number- 4.0, 3.8, 3.5, etc., without seeing the class.
Our family felt this was a nice way of pointing it out so a school didn't overlook it. One school said "they valued a 3.25 with many dual credits over a 3.8 with all h.s. classes, incl Ap's". We just wanted to be sure a prospective school saw that while our son didn't have a 4.0, many classes were college level. We felt once a school was clear on that, they could evaluate him more fairly.
Keep in mind too that not all DE classes transfer to all colleges, just like when a student wants to change from one college to another.</p>