Transcript for advanced students

[ncmom2dawters]

My youngest just knew how to read at 4.5 so we started kindergarten.  Next year she will be 8th grade for us ... (would be 7th if she was in public school) .  She will pretty much be taking the same high school level courses as my 9th grader daughter.  So, by the end of 11th grade she should have enough credits to graduate.  We do not want to graduate her that early because she will not even be 16.5 and we do not want her older sister to share her senior and graduation.  My plan right now is for her to do dual enrollment, CLEP testing, etc... during her 12th grade year.  How will I reflect the high school course work she does during her 8th grade year on a transcript?  For example, if we do US History in 8th ... will she need to take it again as a senior?  I hope not!    

[Barbara H]

It is quite common for students to take some high school level work in middle school and some college level work during high school. There are many options to extend high school so I would not worry about running out of things to do.

 

For public and private school students the high school credits during middle school are most often in foreign language and math. Some schools carry over the credits and some simply list the courses so it is clear the student has met the requirements. The courses can be noted on the transcript as high school credits completed prior to 9th grade. This should not be a big deal at all.

[Gwen in VA]

Consider not having her graduate "early" but giving her a stronger high school program by including college classes during her junior and senior years. This is beneficial when applying to top-tier colleges (which expect advanced coursework) and for merit aid at lower-tier colleges.

[Luckymama]

Consider not having her graduate "early" but giving her a stronger high school program by including college classes during her junior and senior years. This is beneficial when applying to top-tier colleges (which expect advanced coursework) and for merit aid at lower-tier colleges.

This is our plan for dd13.

[bettyandbob]

It is pretty accepted that middle schoolers take foreign language and math for high school credit. My ds was given high school credit for Latin 1 and 2 (taken in 7th and 8th), French 1, 2, and 3 (6th, 7th and 8th) and Alg 1 and Geometry (6th and 7th). 

 

My ds went from homeschool in 8th to public school in 9th and took these credits with him and they appear on his public school transcript. He continued with more advanced levels of French and Math through high school.

 

If I were planning homeschooling through high school, I would not give high school credit for history, science or English taken in middle school because that doesn't fit expected standards. Someone else might provide a good reason for approaching it differently. What I would do is plan on the student taking more advanced levels of those courses in high school and showing the advancement through AP exam or doing the course for college credit through dual enrollment. So, if your dd takes a US History course in middle school, then in high school she would dual enroll for her US history credit. I would do the same for sciences. 

 

At the most competitive colleges we've visited, admissions officers have stated they look to see if the student has taken the most challenging courses available to him/her. There is a significant portion of students at our neighborhood high school who complete the requirements for the full IB diploma, which includes 6 IB classes and one AP course and one dual enrollment. So, they have 8 college level courses before high school graduation. Obviously, if you homeschool, there is no way for an admissions officer to know what the "most challenging courses" available to the student were. However, the message is clear, they want to see the students take challenging material in high school. 

 

 

[kiana]

If at all possible I would pick english/history/science courses for your 9th grader that are not customarily "required" for high school graduation or that your younger child plans to take more advanced levels of during high school. This would sidestep the issue. I'd be reluctant to have, for example, the only us history on a student's transcript be from an 8th grade course, but a non-required course like world geography would be ideal.

[JanetC]

For classes that progress in a standard sequence, such as math or foreign language, it's easy to have a section on "high school credits earned in middle school" on your transcript (collect all high school in grade 8 and earlier as one year).  The middle school credits are "validated" by passing the higher level class in high school.  Another way to "validate" an early high school credit is with something like an SAT subject test, AP or CLEP.

 

For classes like English, giving credit for middle school work is less common.  You should still show four credits of English in high school, even if she was working at a high school level early. 

 

 

[Musicmom]

I had almost exactly the same situation as you.  Ds was reading by age 4, so we started off early, and at home were always at least a year ahead of his "age grade".  The same was true for dd even though she didn't read until age 6.  But I did not want to graduate either one of them early, at age 17.

 

So I counted the last 4 years as high school and did what most of the posters above suggested (see all the posts I liked).  I had a section on the transcript for courses completed before 9th grade, and listed only math (algebra 1 & 2), Latin 1 and Biology.  I gave credit for all but algebra 1 (taken in 7th). 

 

I listed the algebra to show that the algebra sequence had in fact been taken and completed.  Otherwise, it might have seemed to be missing.  Ds and dd went on to do 4 years of math in high school: Geometry, Precalculus, AP Calculus and finally Multivariable Calculus for ds, AP Statistics for dd.

 

I listed the Latin to show the beginning of the sequence--this was important to at least one college.

 

I listed Biology not only to show completeness in the high school sciences, but especially for the Lab (which was a very thorough biology lab.)  Both kids later did advanced biology courses (one through MIT Open Courseware and the other through Thinkwell), but neither of those courses offered a lab, and colleges often require a certain number of lab sciences.

 

I did not list any English or history from 8th grade--these are not sequential courses, plus it is hard to gauge objectively whether the student is really doing high school level work.  They also aren't courses you "check off" as done and don't repeat, like algebra 2, kwim?  You just go further and further in-depth with English and history--which counts just fine for high school and looks better too.

 

Anyway, this worked out very well.  The transcript was accepted without question by every college my kids applied to, including top schools.