If your clients have children heading to college someday, they will undoubtedly be keenly interested in shrinking their ultimate college costs.
One way to reduce these costs is for teenagers to arrive on campus with a slew of college credits that will shave the time they need to earn a bachelor’s degree.
Here are the three main ways high school students can collect college credits before they start their college career:
Advanced Placement courses
International Baccalaureate courses
All three approaches, which can lead to earned college credits, pose their own pros and cons. Here is a look at these options:
Dual Enrollment
Students who pursue dual enrollment end up taking college courses while in high school, which earns them college credits. Every state and school district has its own rules regarding dual enrollment programs.
Often, students take college courses in their own schools, and other times, teenagers attend classes in community colleges through partnerships with their high schools. Still another alternative is to take college classes online, which a wide variety of colleges and universities offer.
The dual enrollment strategy has grown significantly over the past decade. Nearly 2.5 million high school students are enrolled annually in college courses. In some states, including Florida, Georgia, Ohio, and Texas, 20% to 30% or more of high school students take dual enrollment courses.
Advanced Placement Courses
Advanced Placement classes, created by the College Board, which also oversees the SAT test, allow students to take courses that are on par with college classes. There are 38 AP courses, ranging from STEM fields to the arts and humanities to the social sciences.
AP courses are widely available in American high schools, with 76% of public high schools offering them. On average, high schools that participate in the AP program offer 10 AP classes.
International Baccalaureate Courses
The International Baccalaureate, created in Switzerland in the late 1960s, is an intense and time-consuming academic program that some high schools offer. The most impressive IB program is the IB Diploma Programme, available to juniors and seniors. This program covers major academic areas, including math, English, foreign languages and sciences.
Points to consider
While elite and highly selective colleges are impressed with students who graduate with an IB Diploma, it’s not going to be available to most teenagers. Just over 900 high schools provide this opportunity. Roughly an additional 1,000 schools offer IB courses, but not the full diploma option.
California, Florida and Texas have the largest number of IB programs, which are offered mainly through public high schools located in urban areas and/or magnet high schools.AP courses are a popular option, but colleges will not give students college credits without them passing the dreaded Advanced Placement tests. Every May, students may, if they wish, take the applicable tests, which are graded on a 1-to-5 scale.
Earning a score of “3” is considered a passing grade while a “5” indicates mastery. Aiming for college credit via AP tests can be a good option for strong test takers.The policies that colleges use to determine whether an AP exam result merits college credit varies significantly. Some schools will give teenagers college credit for earning a “3” while others will require a “5.” Still other schools, particularly the most elite, might give no credit at all.
An excellent and easy way to determine how a particular public or private college or university treats different scores for a specific test is the College Board’s AP Credit Policy Search.
Using this tool, you can search the AP policies for all the exams for a specific school or discover how more than 2,000 higher-education institutions treat any AP exam from AP Macroeconomics to AP Spanish Language and Culture.Earning dual enrollment credits can be a smart idea for students who want to attend in-state public universities. These institutions are more likely to accept college credits from teenagers who graduated from high school in their own state.
In contrast, schools outside the teenager’s state, and especially highly selective and elite colleges, are less likely to accept dual enrollment credits. Why? Because there is no way to measure the rigor of the coursework.
As these institutions view it, an “A” in a dual enrollment class taught by a high school teacher won’t be a reliable indicator of what the student learned, much less mastered. These institutions will see a high score less dependable than a national standard, such as a high AP exam score or an IB diploma.When deciding which route to take, students should consider consulting their high school counselor.