My daughter is a Junior in High School and has been taking classes at our local community college since the 9th grade. She’s graduating this May with her AA prior to the start of her senior yr in hs. She recently was told by her hs counselor that she should not make colleges aware that she has already completed 2 years because she will automatically be considered a Transfer student and most likely won’t be able to get housing and limit her financial aid options. Is this true? Should we apply as a Freshman or a Transfer student? She is only 17.
Does she want credit for the two years at CC, or spend four years at the next school?
If she wants the full 4 year college experience, she should apply as a freshman, but if she wants credit for the courses she has completed (this will save a lot of money, so it’s worth considering), she will be regarded as a transfer student. For elite schools, this will make admission much more difficult than it already is, and at most schools will limit both housing and financial aid options. But if you only have to pay for two years of college, it might be worth it to apply as a transfer student.
What colleges is she looking at?
What stats and GPA’s?
What financial constraints?
At many elite privates, transferring in is harder (though it’s easier to transfer in to Vandy and a few others). At many publics, transferring in may be easier if she has a high CC GPA.
The best merit scholarships are for entering freshmen, but you could save on 2 years of college if you transfer in with 2 years of credit (but the college would have to take them; typically, in-state publics do and have articulation agreements in place, but OOS publics may be uncertain).
Usually, college courses before high school graduation do not force a student to be a transfer. It is usually advantageous to apply as frosh for admission and scholarships.
Check each college to be sure of its rules.
If entering as frosh, would she be okay with repeating the same courses taken at CC, if required?
My son graduated high school with an AA degree. He had high stats (grades & ACT). We only looked at colleges with high merit aid. Of the schools that we were considering, all of them treated a high school graduate with college courses earned during high school to be an incoming freshman for admission/scholarship purposes. In addition, all of them also accepted his credits as transfer credits.
For admission/scholarship purposes - he was an incoming freshman everywhere he applied.
For credit purposes - classes transferred and he was a junior everywhere he applied.
For housing - the trend seemed to be that he was automatically a freshman, but could have opted out of on-campus dorms because of his credit status.
For financial aid - we did not apply for financial aid. (Unless you are talking about merit scholarship), so I don’t have any personal experience there.
Your results may be different based on what type of colleges you are looking at. We have a high EFC, so we did not consider any ivy/elite schools because we weren’t willing to pay their price.
Another thought - some of the colleges allowed some college courses to be taken the summer after high school graduation and still maintain incoming freshman status for admission and scholarships. Other colleges did not allow any college courses to be taken that summer.
Our experience with high school counselors is that they generally know far less than a parent who has done their own research. Most of this information can be found on colleges’ websites. If I couldn’t find it there, I would just call and ask.