Both our kids attend large NC semi-competitive public high school. It is weird because we have >55% free lunch kids and then I’d say 30% subdivision kids with parents making $150k++.
I’d say the the top 15% of the kids take 6-8 APs minimum + 10+ honors classes. And these are the kids that aim for state flagships – UNC and NCSU. My DD took AP Chem and got an A but she also took Chem Hon before that but got a B. She got a B in AP Bio but all other bio honors classes were As. She said AP Chem was the hardest class she took but that she enjoyed it.
Son took AP Physics last semester as a sophomore (only SO in the class, rest were seniors) and got a B. He had to dig in and he is the more sciency kid. BTW, we do not help our kids with homework at all. Nor do we get them tutors etc. So, I was immensely proud of how hard he worked to get that B. He said it was very hard and that he would wait to take AP Physics II until his senior year.
Public high school for my D but we are one of the top districts in the state so it is gets a little crazy with the competition between high schools. Our school tends to push DE very heavily more than AP but unfortunately, my D doesn’t really have an interest staying in state if she gets a better acceptance. Since she is top 5% and isn’t interested in DE, all of her recommendations from her teachers are for AP. But this topic got me curious so I decided to count and our school offers 29 different AP classes. Several of those are in the arts though which I know often aren’t figured in GPAs for certain colleges
Estimate of number of course selections (as courses tend to change yearly) and some are year long and others are just semesters so its a bit confusing.
Accelerated - 4 (what some may call “honors”-mostly at frosh/soph level as theres very limited AP options for them)
Dual credit with state college- 11 (you have to pay to get the credits)
Dual credit with tech college- 6 (you don’t have to pay to get the credits)
I don’t really see the point of DE. Maybe I am missing something, but not one of the 12 schools D21 (started) apps to took DE. Even most of her APs had limited use at her top group of schools (used for advancement/leveling more than straight credits toward graduation).
from what we’ve seen with our older kids, the more elite the school, the less DE credits and AP scores they will take.
for a good majority of state/public schools, DE is good; so is AP.
You just really have to research if your schools of interest take them and how they transfer. I have loved figuring out the puzzle piece to it all over the years. I base it off of our state flagship; look at several majors, and see if DE credits actually will fill a needed class, or are just extra electives and not needed. I kind of geek out on this - but it’s been fun for me.
My D16 did run into a problem when applying to grad school - one top school (UCB) wouldn’t take her AP calc score that her undergrad took; and she ended up not applying there as she didnt want to take calc over the summer after college graduation.
My D23’s private school this year only has 3 AP classes; the rest are DE. The public school before had LOTS of AP classes; but a very dismal pass rate. Not sure what’s better.
Did they take any transfer credit? Because DE courses are college courses, and therefore should be accepted in the same way that transfer courses from another college are (or are not), and vanishingly few colleges refuse to accept transfer credit from another accredited college.
Nope, none, if you are applying as a first year student. If you are applying as a transfer then yes, but you have to have been enrolled full-time at the school you are transferring in from. Not just taking college courses while in high school. It was a very common theme. Now, we only applied to one in-state public, the rest out of state privates, but still it was true across the board.
I have seriously never seen this pattern. I mean, I’m sure it happens some places, but running into a cluster like this makes me want to look things up as a faculty member at a university that has a fair number of DE students. Which colleges did you run into with this policy?
i will say of the 3 colleges my older ones attend/attended - DE and AP credits were a part of our cost savings strategy. We didn’t look very hard at the elite schools!
The list we are looking at is also private/smaller LACs and that’s where we are seeing that DE isn’t necessarily accepted. I will also say that several years ago on a tour of Vanderbilt, the question was posed to the AO about DE vs AP and she flat out said they think AP is more rigorous than DE when evaluating applications. I’m not saying she’s right about that statement nor do I know if that is the case for all private schools, but it definitely made an impression on me.
D19’s college (Penn) also does not give first year students credit for DE courses unless those courses were taken at Penn through one of their pre-college programs. All other DE courses are considered “part of a student’s preparation for a Penn education.”
They also give a limited amount of credit for AP classes. No credit or advanced standing is given for APUSH, Environmental Science, bio, and chem (unless admitted to SEAS). My D was disappointed her 4 on the Calc BC exam didn’t count for credit; Penn requires a 5 on all AP exams.
So this is all most interesting, and it sent me down a bit of a policy rabbit hole.
Vanderbilt accepts DE credit if it was earned via what might be called (since there is no term for this, really) “traditional” DE methods—that is, it was a college course taken as a college course from college faculty while a student was in high school. Penn, on the other hand, doesn’t accept any college credits aside from those they awarded themselves taken while a student was in high school (or the summer immediately following high school), no matter whether they were DE or not.
I poked around a bit more, and it’s rare for DE credit to not be treated as regular transfer credit, but where those policies are in place, they appear to have generally begun with the 2018 or 2019 entering classes. (Which I guess is part of why I was didn’t think they existed—my D17 wouldn’t have been affected by them, and my D19 was applying to Big State Universities for engineering.)
These moves appear to have followed in the wake of some or the regional accrediting agencies tightening standards on DE offerings—and Vanderbilt’s policy, for example, seems to simply take the most restrictive of those and have them apply to students from anywhere, whether they’re in a region with those rules or not. Penn’s policy honestly seems to be marketing-based—essentially, indirectly claiming that their courses are better than other places’ courses. (That’s what the phrasing sounds like, it really does.) I do find it intriguing that Penn’s restrictions (and those of the other colleges who went a similar route) followed efforts to make sure DE credits really are earned in a rigorous fashion; it makes me wish I had access to things like faculty senates’ minutes, to see exactly what was being responded to.
My D17 took classes at Penn as part of the Young Scholars Program and was told they’d count if she attended Penn back in 2016. Her current school of Princeton did not accept any transfer credits including the Penn classes (she took classes at Drexel as well). Princeton also recently reactivated their Transfer Program as was accepting 15-20 Transfer a year and I believe even those they had 2 years of classes to transfer in they were set as Sophs and would have to complete 3 years at Princeton.
Also the Penn classes were taught through their Evening College (LPS) with other non-traditional students in the class. Even though they were the same class I don’t think they were quite as rigorous as the classes taught in A&S especially the grading
Absolutely “elite” universities and liberal arts colleges think their courses are better than “average” colleges’ courses! That’s nothing new.
Back in the 1980s, my brother dropped out of his Ivy League school after freshman year. He worked for two years, then did a year enrolled at our state flagship, where he took an overloaded schedule and earned all A+ grades. He reapplied to the Ivy, hoping he could reenter as a junior. The Ivy, very begrudgingly, gave him credit for TWO courses (to make up for the two courses he failed as a freshman), and had him reenter as a sophomore. The good news was, one of his high school friends was in law school at that point, so at least he had someone his own age to live with.
Yeah—the Ivies (and other hyeprselectives) have always had restrictive transfer policies. The thing that seems to be at least mostly of recent vintage is treating DE transfer credit differently than other transfer credit.
Broadening this to transfer policies more generally, though, I’ve long thought that things like Princeton’s policy that @Dolemite mentioned above are just cash grabs, getting an extra year of revenue out of their students. Maybe that’s just cynicism? Maybe. But then again, maybe it’s just realism.
My older kids both got a couple of DE credits accepted in their mid size private schools. I’ll say that one benefit is that ANY credits your child comes in with will put them ahead when it comes to registering for classes in college, each semester. Even just one credit will mean your child registers before all of the kids in their class who came in with zero, and it can matter!
But this only applies to certain colleges–just an FYI for future readers to do their homework if this benefit matters to you–this rule would not have applied to any of the colleges our D21 applied to .
