Tell me about numbers of credits

[Grantmom]

How much does the total number of credits on the transcript really matter?  If you've gotten in all of the requirements for your top choices of colleges, does it matter if you have padded your transcript with extra electives?  Or is it just the same if you've spent your time doing other interesting and engaging things?  The local high school students take 8 classes per year, so that would add up to 32 credits in 4 years.  However, to get the Advanced Studies diploma, they only need 26 credits.  Are some people not taking 8 classes a year?  Is everyone taking a study hall?  Or do the ones who actually wind up with 32 credits have a transcript that looks better?

 

I am just trying to figure out how to structure the transcript, and whether or not to include things like PE and Driver's Ed, which DS is doing, but I don't think of them as academic subjects.  I guess what I am trying to ask is that, as a homeschooler, would a transcript with 24 credits, that covers all of the requirements of the college's admissions policies, look inferior to a transcript with 32 credits?

 

I know people say less is not more when it comes to this, and students who have 8 science credits and 6 math credits are going to stand way out in the crowd.  But, I am just trying to figure out what to count as actual courses on the transcript and what to include as extracurriculars.  For example, local high school students in the STEM program do an internship that actually is a class and for which they get credit.  My DS is also doing an internship, but I wasn't planning on including that as a credit.  I thought it would just be listed separately.  The same for things like PE and Driver's Ed.

 

Any thoughts?

Edited August 28, 2016 by Grantmom

[Melissa B]

My dd's transcript showed 24.5 credits. I did not include any of the extras or any of her 8th grade classes even though they were high school credits. It did not seem to make a difference. She was accepted to every college and awarded high merit aid at two of them.

[rdj2027]

I only put down academic classes and the only class from 8th grade is Latin 1.  My son will have about 24 credits.

[Guest]

My son got admitted into a large state university's honor college with only 22 credits, fwiw.

[laughing lioness]

Not every class is worth a full credit. Based on Carnegie Units- 60 hrs = 1/2 credit.

Driver's Ed- if listed, is usually .25 credit. 

A 4 x 4 Transcript is going to be a solid transcipt, but your student should have done something besides 16 credits- health, speech, computer, etc.Don't forget Music, Art, shop, etc. 

We did a house re-build when ds 21 was in High school and I gave him a credit of Shop for 2 yrs. 

My kids also do Shakespeare Camp every summer- you could count this as a 1/2 credit of Shakespeare, Lit, History, Drama, etc. Or just list it under "Camps."

Foreign Language? 

 

 

Credit ranges for high school vary from 21-26 plus (which is at the high end. I would include PE but not necessarily Driver's Ed. 

Also, list camps, workshops, Community Service,internships by year at the bottom. 

For DE, Honors or AP, I would clearly mark them-you could weight them differently, but be careful to include a grading scale. 

 

Edited August 29, 2016 by laughing lioness

[MerryAtHope]

I'll bet it's unlikely that most kids have 32 credits. I'd look at what the school requires credit-wise for graduation to get a true picture of what most transcripts are looking like from your local high school. Many high schools have seniors who only take 4-5 credits that year because they are working more. And as you said, kids may have study hall.

 

HSLDA lists 24 credits for "general college prep," and 28+ for "rigorous college prep" if you look up their suggestions. 

 

I did list both PE and Driver Safety Education on my kids' transcripts, because our local high school does and it seemed fair to be comparable. My kids generally have about 5 credits per year of academic courses, and then 1-2 credits worth of electives (PE, fine arts, etc...)

 

Look at what your state requires, compare local requirements (not meaning you need to follow them, but just to get an idea of what schools in your area do), and look at what colleges that your family might consider require--the state and college requirements are going to be the most important guidelines to follow. A fairly typical requirement list usually includes 4 years of English, 3-4 years of math, 3 or more years Social Studies, 3 or more years Science (often stipulating that at least 1 or 2 of those must be lab sciences), 2 or more years of the same foreign language, 1 year of fine arts credit.

 

One of mine graduated with 24.5 credits, the other will likely have 25.5. I don't think it's the number of credits that's as important as the classes meeting requirements and a good GPA--solid test scores really help as well if you are going for scholarships.

[8filltheheart]

I would make the decision based on the colleges being applied to. At least 1 of dd's colleges requires a PE credit, so not including one if she has one makes no sense.

 

As far as number of credits, again I would want at least the minimum of recommended credit hours. Most of my kids have had high credit hours. I do include math, science, and foreign language credits earned before 9th. My current 12th grader has 7 credits just from that alone: 2 Latin, 2 French, alg, geo, and biology.

[quark]

I researched and spoke to other parents with kids who have been accepted to the universities that DS is interested in and we are following their example. I don't know yet if it will be successful.

 

We are including 5 credits from pre-high school (7th and 8th grade) but mainly to show the depth and breadth of math studies. I know people say to include only the last 4 years and that it will be self explanatory but in most cases, if I do that, adcomms will assume that he has only had traditional prerequisites like algebra I to geometry/ algebra II etc. They won't know that he has taken so many more than that, that he has a very pointy interest in that subject area and that his interest led him to study some challenging non-traditional math, unless I include them in the transcript and explain the courses in the course descriptions. DS is not going to spend a lot of time in essays describing his high school-college level math adventures taken in junior high because he has other things to talk about so the only thing I can think of is to give him credit where credit is due via the transcript.

 

All of his credits are academic. I just realized that none of the universities he is interested in are interested in what he did for PE. I am already nervous that by me reporting the truth someone who doesn't read his application carefully will think it is padded. So I removed PE to help them see that we are not simply adding credits. Even without PE, he will have 30+ credits. That seems to be the norm among homeschoolers we know who were accepted to these colleges.

[FaithManor]

4 math, 4 science, 4 English, 4 Social Sciences, 2 foreign language, 1 PE,  and 1 Fine Arts adds up to 20 and usually the local kids have 2- 4 electives. Driver's Ed is not provided by the school and receives no credit. So 23 or 24 would be normal. Obviously DE is different because most college classes are 3 credit courses.

 

We do not list anything from 8th grade ever. Just what was accomplished in the last four years of schooling, and DE courses have their own transcripts so I issue a homeschool transcript for the work that I taught or supervised, and they get a college transcript for the DE. 

 

22-24 credits taught by me/hubby and 6 DE credits would be the norm for us. The college bound kids locally usually have 22-24 credits, but there is so little DE option that most would never top out over 26.

 

My kids have all been accepted to every college they applied, and the oldest two have done just fine in college. Next ds starts classes at the end of the week, moves to campus tomorrow so the jury is still out with him.

 

Oh, and we didn't have PE credits, but none of the schools cared about that.

[Shoes+Ships+SealingWax]

Just remembering from my own HS days, we had an 8-block schedule but 1 block was always lunch & most seniors took the last 1-2 blocks off if they could, leaving them with credits numbering in the middle-20s.

[creekland]

We stuck with making our number similar to our local public schools.  Since we're on Block Scheduling (at ps), kids taking a full schedule would graduate with 32 credits.  Most seniors don't actually take a full schedule.  They have to take at least 4 credits (assuming they passed all their other classes), so somewhere between 28 and 32 is what our graduates have.  No credits from 8th grade or below count.

 

That said, many schools only offer 7 credits per year, so the max would be 28.  I would expect anything between 24 and 28 to be considered "good" too.

 

Many colleges aren't all that selective if a student's scores are competitive, so the actual number of credits probably doesn't matter as much for admittance as long as they have all the courses the school requires.  Scholarships can be more competitive at schools where they aren't automatic.  My kids who knew they wanted to head into the sciences had more than the required 4 science credits.  If I recall correctly, I believe they had 7.  They selected their courses based upon what they liked.

[Haiku]

My kids won't have 30+ credits, and it's not the norm around here. College-bound kids usually have 24 minimum, and some have up to 28. But the usual class schedule around here is 7 class periods, and most kids take a study hall at least some of the time.

 

I'm not worried about racking up the credits. But contrary to advice I receive on TWTM, I will list 8th grade credits on the transcript in the "credits earned prior to high school" column because it's accepted in our area to earn a few high school credits in 8th grade and factor them into the GPA.

[8filltheheart]

Same here, Haiku. The past 2 states we have lived in the norm for the school systems has been to include credits earned in middle school on the high school transcript.

[Grantmom]

DS is definitely interested in a STEM track, so is it enough to aim for about 28 credits?  That's 7 per year.  But within that, would you NOT include things like PE and Driver's Ed?

[Tess in the Burbs]

ok can someone clarify something for me about the early credits?  My kids will both have math credits from middle school(algebra/geometry) but I didn't think I could count those credits.  I could list on the transcript, but the total transcript # is from 9-12th grade only.  Am I wrong?  Can I also count the middle school stuff?  Or does it matter? 

[Grantmom]

I really think it varies.  Some people do and some people don't.  And some who do, include the grade in the GPA, while some put it on the transcript but don't include the GPA  I would look and see what your local HS does.  I think you just have to be clear about what you are doing on the transcript.  So, for example, have a column saying credits earned before high school, and a note about whether or not those grades are included in the GPA.

 

 

[MysteryJen]

Whether you can count middle school stuff depends on different factors. This is where it is very useful to know other high schoolers and ask them or their parents. Here, you need four years of math and it doesn't matter if you took higher math in middle school, it won't be on your transcript. It will be self explanatory to colleges who see calculus sophomore year. Foreign language appears most frequently because you only need 2 or 3 years.

NCAA accepts 8th grade classes to fill core requirements, so we listed them. Algebra 1, US History (required at some schools-needed to be on transcript), and American literature. They accepted all of those classes. For the NCAA transcript, they needed to be included in the GPA, as they calculate GPA for their sliding scale with the core classes. For her regular transcript, we did not include grades for 8th classes.

If you have a strong transcript, I don't think it matters much either way.

[creekland]

DS is definitely interested in a STEM track, so is it enough to aim for about 28 credits?  That's 7 per year.  But within that, would you NOT include things like PE and Driver's Ed?

 

We included PE and Driver's Ed (half credit per course).  That's normal for our b&m schools around here.

 

ok can someone clarify something for me about the early credits?  My kids will both have math credits from middle school(algebra/geometry) but I didn't think I could count those credits.  I could list on the transcript, but the total transcript # is from 9-12th grade only.  Am I wrong?  Can I also count the middle school stuff?  Or does it matter? 

 

I think as long as you're clear with what you are doing, it's fine.  We listed them, but did not give credit nor factor them into the GPA, but again, that's what schools around here do and I wanted to stay consistent with them.

 

Where you could run into problems is if you count middle school Alg and Geometry as 4 math credits in high school.  Many colleges say they want to see 3 or 4 credits during high school.  Check with colleges on that to be sure.  When my middle son did World History in 8th grade (high school course), I listed it but didn't count it (like we do), but I also checked with colleges to be sure they were ok with his only having 3 credits for social studies in high school rather than 4.  In his case, he wanted more room for science classes.  They said it was fine as long as he could explain in an interview why he did it that way.  He still had 4 high school credits for math (Alg II, Pre-Calc, Stats, Calc) so I didn't worry about that one.

[Julie Smith]

To graduate from highschool in Ontario you need 30 credits, and 40 hours of community service.

 

of those 30 credits, 18 are compulsory:

• 4 credits in English (1 credit per grade)*
• 3 credits in mathematics (1 credit in Grade 11 or 12)
• 2 credits in science
• 1 credit in Canadian history
• 1 credit in Canadian geography
• 1 credit in the arts
• 1 credit in health and physical education
• 1 credit in French as a second language
• 0.5 credit in career studies
• 0.5 credit in civics

http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/extra/eng/ppm/graduate.html

 

Eta you also have some additional requirements, that are basically do more French.

Edited August 30, 2016 by Julie Smith

[quark]

For us, GPA only includes grades 9-12 (w/o PE).

[ondreeuh]

We homeschool in a partnership with our local school district. My 9th grade son needs 24.5 credits to graduate, which won't be hard to do.

 

He completed 1 credit in the summer (0.5 health, 0.5 algebra semester 1). He is going on an educational travel trip this year that I believe will give him 1 credit. He is taking PE all year because he can count yard work, hiking, canoeing, ice skating, etc. He did a lot of hiking in July and already has more than half of the required hours for 0.5 credit PE.

 

At the end of his freshman year he could have up to 10 credits (bold indicates a required class):

 

1.5 credits math (1 algebra, 0.5 geometry)

1.0 credit science (Earth science)

1.5 credits English (1.0 English 1, 0.5 speech/debate)

3.0 credits social studies  (1 world geography, 0.5 logic, 0.5 leadership, 0.5 civics, 0.5 psychology)

0.5 career tech (home ec)

1.0 credits PE

0.5 credit health

1.0 credits educational travel

 

He will still need:

1.5 credits math (geometry & algebra 2)

2.0 credits science (bio and chem)

3.0 credits social studies (US history, world history, state history, government)

2.5 credits English (English 2, others)

5.5 credits electives