Taking Classes at City College As High Schooler?

Pre-College Issues Home Schooling and College
1

Apologies if this is in the wrong forum! My question/topic is sorta an in-between of the forums, no?

-Has anybody done college courses (like, on a college campus, with college students) during high school before? Estimated cost? I plan to take some sort of college course over summer so time management isn’t too much of a concern, but I’m worried about adjusting to a college pace/environment (I haven’t taken AP classes before, even, just honors), and that it might have some sort of social drawback.

Why college courses, you ask? Well. Starting junior year next year, and everybody around me is taking 3+ APs, and here I am, afraid my grades with pitfall if I take too many. :)) So I figured taking them outside of school would be less stressful. Maybe.

My planned schedule for junior year so far is:

AP English
AP Bio*
AP U.S. History*
Pre-Stats&Calc (my school has this weird math thing)
German III
Chamber Orchestra

*Now, I’ve heard that AP Bio and AP History are pretty challenging at my school, so I should take one or the other. I’m considering taking regular history instead of AP to fulfill graduation requirements, and maybe taking a history course at the city college to get college credit for it. Should I do that for Bio? Thoughts? Should I go for it, or just plow through 3 APs?

-If I do take college courses, I was thinking of taking German as well (languages are fun, except for grammar, but I digress), but would that be too much for someone who’s never even taken an AP course? I’d be doing it more for the sake of learning something new/fun rather than college credit, though.

2

What you are asking is called dual enrollment and is quite common and very accepted by both high school and colleges. My non homeschooling son did calc 2 last semester and is doing stats this semester. (Calc 3 was at the wrong time.) My homeschool son will be taking dual enrollment when he hits his junior year of high school as well.

You will need to check with your high school to see how they utilize the grades and credits from college classes. Some high schools will average the grades and allow the credits. Others do not count the grades. You might also need to get the permission of your counselor or principal. We are lucky because our city college does not charge tuition for highschool students so it is free.

3

@LKnomad Thanks for your input! Did your son have any time management/"fitting in"issues when he first started dual enrollment?

4

My son is a very organized person so the DE was not a big deal. He did have some trouble getting classes at the right time and ended up taking stats instead of calc 3 because of timing issues. As for fitting in, nobody knew he was a high school student and he had one of the highest grades in the class.