ADVERTISEMENT

OT - High School students AP and Concurrent Enrollment College Credit

Chief Wiggum

Sophomore
Sep 29, 2001
1,269
2,489
113
Holy cow, did I get my eyes opened last night - I have two daughters, one will be entering college this fall and the other will be a senior. Both have taken concurrent enrollment classes offered through at their high school in coordination with a local community college, plus they have taken several AP classes. I admittedly didn't know much about any of that stuff; I knew that the concurrent enrollment classes had a chance of transferring to their school of choice, no guarantee , etc and I knew that the AP classes counted differently towards their GPA, but beyond that I really didn't know anything.

What I didn't realize is how much of an effect on their college finances those classes have....both of my girls will have 13 concurrent enrollment credits when the graduate; my daughter who is entering college in fall got full credit for all those classes, so that is nice.

The thing that blew my mind was the AP credits - my oldest has taken two AP credit tests, one in Psychology and one in World History - she got her results back, scored a 4 on both tests. At the institution she is attending, her score of 4 in World History actually counts as credit for two separate classes, meaning that one test covers six credit hours. Bottom line, my oldest will have 22 credit hours on her transcript already and has yet to step foot on her university. She could conceivably graduate in 3 years if she takes 16-17 hours a semester or maybe takes a summer class or two.

Conservatively, that saves probably in the neighborhood of 20-30k over the course of her education - just a huge savings for us as parents and we paid next to nothing for those credits, as most of them were subsidized by her school. I don't remember her school really outlining the value of those classes, although to be fair, I was pretty ignorant about the whole process and the information (if it was presented) probably was lost on me.

If you are parents that have current or future HS students, I would implore you to investigate what type of options are available to your kids at the school that they attend - the benefit and value of those programs are so immense, I am embarrassed that I was so dumb about the whole process until a few days ago.
 
Holy cow, did I get my eyes opened last night - I have two daughters, one will be entering college this fall and the other will be a senior. Both have taken concurrent enrollment classes offered through at their high school in coordination with a local community college, plus they have taken several AP classes. I admittedly didn't know much about any of that stuff; I knew that the concurrent enrollment classes had a chance of transferring to their school of choice, no guarantee , etc and I knew that the AP classes counted differently towards their GPA, but beyond that I really didn't know anything.

What I didn't realize is how much of an effect on their college finances those classes have....both of my girls will have 13 concurrent enrollment credits when the graduate; my daughter who is entering college in fall got full credit for all those classes, so that is nice.

The thing that blew my mind was the AP credits - my oldest has taken two AP credit tests, one in Psychology and one in World History - she got her results back, scored a 4 on both tests. At the institution she is attending, her score of 4 in World History actually counts as credit for two separate classes, meaning that one test covers six credit hours. Bottom line, my oldest will have 22 credit hours on her transcript already and has yet to step foot on her university. She could conceivably graduate in 3 years if she takes 16-17 hours a semester or maybe takes a summer class or two.

Conservatively, that saves probably in the neighborhood of 20-30k over the course of her education - just a huge savings for us as parents and we paid next to nothing for those credits, as most of them were subsidized by her school. I don't remember her school really outlining the value of those classes, although to be fair, I was pretty ignorant about the whole process and the information (if it was presented) probably was lost on me.

If you are parents that have current or future HS students, I would implore you to investigate what type of options are available to your kids at the school that they attend - the benefit and value of those programs are so immense, I am embarrassed that I was so dumb about the whole process until a few days ago.
My 2nd daughter is entering college this fall. Learned a ton with the first one going thru the process 3 years ago. Between taking a few high school classes in conjunction with the local community college and AP exams my entering freshmen daughter should have 18 hours of college credits before walking into her first freshmen class. :)
 
Sir, a hearty congratulations to both you and your daughter...sounds like she has her act together and has a bright future ahead of her!
Man...I am shocked myself. Her mom deserves a lot of credit.

Shes in summer school now taking classes for her major.

And she works....I'm blown away.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Chief Wiggum
Finishing college early?

No thanks! Ha

But yeah, dual enrollment and AP classes are super popular (and pushed a lot) now.
 
  • Like
Reactions: jeans1515
While AP credits described above are great and are 100% worthwhile for most

Beware - for some attempting to get into extremely competitive post grad fields - for better or worse many of these fields require a GPA as close to 4.0 as possible to gain admittance (I’m not arguing this is just but simply the way things are)

the AP courses give you college credits but not a letter grade - thus the college classes you take become skewed to the more difficult and your gpa may be quite a bit lower because all of your lower level courses (ones you would have easily received As) are for credit only

have known some where this has really bit them in the ass when applying to highly competitive programs
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: Chief Wiggum
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest posts

ADVERTISEMENT