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.
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.