Taking classes at a community college the summer before college?

<p>I was wondering if during the summer before I go to college in the fall if I can take some courses to get some of my gen ed requirements out of the way. How would this work? And could i even do it?</p>

<p>All three of my kids have done this. Many colleges have a website where you can find specific community colleges and course and the university course they will satisfy. You should contact the college you are attending first though to make sure. Here is an example from Penn State. <a href=“https://www.admissions.psu.edu/my_admissions/tas/othersToPsu_2.cfm[/url]”>https://www.admissions.psu.edu/my_admissions/tas/othersToPsu_2.cfm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>I will be taking 2 courses at the local community college this summer. You just go and apply for whatever you want (make sure it transfers though). You should be able to register about now.</p>

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<p>You need to contact YOUR college. DD’s college would NOT allow community courses to satisfy their gen ed requirements once you made the decision to matriculate. </p>

<p>DS’s school required prior approval of the courses including a course description to be sure it was an equivalent course.</p>

<p>You have to have the classes pre- approved by your college. Otherwise, there is a very good chance you will get no credit for them. Even if you do get them approved and get the credit, at most schools they will not be calculated into your GPA.</p>

<p>Ok thank you I will contact my school. I would actually prefer if the course I take won’t go onto my gpa. I am absolutely horrible at math and I really want to get that requirement out of the way.</p>

<p>I did this and I’m very happy I did. I took calculus because I wanted to get ahead in my maths so I could take the prereq. maths for the upper level physics classes. it worked really well for me as I was able to cram a bunch into one semester after that. I could graduate in 3 years now while taking hte minimum number of hours allowed.</p>

<p>I’m saying this because maybe you might want to take your math to get it out the way, but maybe try and plan ahead if you feel like you want to get some other boring parts out of the way in your major. At the very least, your university will accept the credit. Mine accepted the GPA (don’t worry, community college is really easy, if you’re competent at all you’ll make A’s), and this turned out to be good (and will probably be good for you too).</p>

<p>Contact your college is correct but here’s a little more on that.</p>

<p>Your college may have a transfer database where they list courses from other institutions and whether or not they will accept those transfer credits and how many credits will transfer in and the target course that it would replace for requirements. So MA 1234 at Local Community College with 5 credits would transfer into MA 221 at your school with 4 credits. This is only if the school has such a database. If you have a course which isn’t in their database, then there may be a way to request the school to evaluate the course to add to their database.</p>

<p>It may be a good idea to ask your department and the registrar what the rules are on transfer credits taken after acceptance. You might find this on the school’s website too. You might also want to check out the quality of the CC courses that you will be taking. Quality can vary widely and you wouldn’t want a low-quality course if you’re going to be taking many other courses dependent on the knowledge from that course.</p>

<p>Absolutely check with your school first. At my daughter’s school they cautioned that taking CC classes between HS graduation and the fall could change a students status from freshman to transfer (especially when there were AP credits involved) which could cause loss of eligibility for freshman scholarships. </p>

<p>Always best to check with your own school.</p>

<p>My D took two gen eds at the local CC the summer between her Jr and Sr years of high school, because I won 6 tuition hours in a silent auction. She already knew where she wanted to go to college (a state school) so no problem with credits transferring. She ended up doing a co-op during spring semester of Jr year, but still graduated on time. That may well not have happened if I hadn’t won that auction!</p>