High school credit for college classes

[Trilliums]

If you child took a semester long, college class in physics 2 w/lab, modern physics w/lab, calculus 3, or linear algebra, how many high school credits did you assign to the classes?

 

My son's physics 2 class shows up on his public school transcripts as 1/2 of a high school credit.  The othe classes will not be shown on the public school transcript and I am wondering whether to keep each college class as half a high school credit.  If I do, his senior year will seem low on credits despite taking a challenging course load.

 

thoughts?

 

 

[regentrude]

It depends on the level and the required amount of time.

I have given one full high school credit for one semester of a 4 credit hour Calculus based Physics with lab that required 12+ hours per week.

I have given  one full high school credit for two semesters of a 3 credit hour algebra based physics course with lab that covered the same material as an AP B high school course, and on the same level - thus one credit for the two semesters. The calc based course for engineering majors went much deeper and was a lot more time consuming and thus IMO justifies one full high school credit for one semester.

 

I gave a full high school credit for a one semester Modern Physics course due to time spent and level of the material.

I would give a full credit for calc 3 because of level of material; there is no high school equivalent to compare it with.

 

IN the end: there is no transcript police. I have not heard from anybody whose transcript was questioned with respect to high school credits assigned for college courses. In fact, I have never heard that the actual number of high school credits matters at all - whereas the level of coursework definitely does.

[snowbeltmom]

Fwiw, I assigned 1/2 credit for both multivariable calculus (Calc III) and linear algebra, but I think you could also justify assigning a full credit for each course.  My reasoning for assigning 1/2 a credit was that I assigned one credit for AP Calc BC, which is the equivalent of Calc I and Calc II in college.  However, my public school assigns 2 credits for Calc BC which would result in Calc III (it is not offered though) being worth 1 credit.

[Mom22ns]

I would give 1 credit for each of the courses you listed.

[kiana]

I think you really can go either way with those.

 

I would be guided by whether the number of credits was going to look unduly high or unduly low to admissions officials. I think it is entirely fair to assign one credit per semester, but if it would result in 10+ credits per year I would count them as one-half instead.

[Ellie]

For a semester-long class, I gave my dc 10 credits (in California, high schools give 10 credits for year-long classes, 5 for a semester-long class), regardless of what the class is. IOW, a semester of college is worth a year of high school.

[Teachin'Mine]

I would take a look at how credits may transfer at his target colleges.  Some won't accept any dual-enrolled college credits if the student received high school credit for them.  After all the high school requirements are met, 4yrs math, 3 or 4 yrs science, etc., you may want to leave some off the high school transcript or at least not give any high school credit for them.  If he's going to a state university, this may not be necessary, and some privates won't allow any credit transfer, but for the ones that do, it's often a stipulation that the student did not receive high school credit for the course, meaning that it wasn't necessary to fulfill high school graduation requirements.  But either way, a 1/2 credit for Physics II with lab is ridiculous.   As Regentrude has done, I can understand giving one credit for both semesters of algebra based physics as it's more equivalent to a high school level course, but not for calculus based physics.

 

Just re-read your post and see that the transcript for those will be coming from the public school, so there's not too much you can do about that.  But I wouldn't let their assigning of credits affect how you assign them for classes which won't appear on their transcript.  A agree with Kiana, although dd's credit count was ridiculously high, but it was accurate.

[Sunshine State Sue]

I would give 1 credit for each of the courses you listed.

 

:iagree: Our CC has the number of HS credits awarded for a CC class in writing.  Does your CC have something like this?  1/2 credit for physics 2 seems unreasonable to me.

[dirty ethel rackham]

I agree with Regentrude that there are no transcript police.  As a general rule, for classes below 4 college credit hours, I have 1/2 a high school credit.  For classes that were 4 and above, I considered giving a full year of high school credit.  My reasoning is that some AP classes (worth 1 high school credit) covered the same material as two 3 credit hour college classes, so I didn't feel comfortable giving a full year credit for one of those college classes. 

 

But, those are just my arbitrary rules.  I know others who went with 1 credit for a semester of work and had not problems with college admissions. 

[Trilliums]

I appreciate the replies.

 

We were thinking that we needed a consistent policy for assigning credit from university classes but I think we will assign credit as seems appropriate for each class ( and hope we don't stir up the ire of any transcript police!).

 

Starting a new thread for my next question.

[angela in ohio]

I agree with Regentrude that there are no transcript police.  As a general rule, for classes below 4 college credit hours, I have 1/2 a high school credit.  For classes that were 4 and above, I considered giving a full year of high school credit.  My reasoning is that some AP classes (worth 1 high school credit) covered the same material as two 3 credit hour college classes, so I didn't feel comfortable giving a full year credit for one of those college classes. 

 

But, those are just my arbitrary rules.  I know others who went with 1 credit for a semester of work and had not problems with college admissions. 

 

Same here. I actually put that on our transcript: CC courses of 3 credit hours or less received 1/2 credit and courses of 4 or more received 1 full credit.

 

[Jenny in Florida]

When I signed the articulation agreement for my son to dual enroll at our local community college, I had to agree to give certain amounts of credit for certain classes. Essentially, the rule boiled down to: If the class at the college is used to replace a high school class that is usually one semester long, schools and homeschools must award one half credit for that course on the high school transcript. If the college class replaces a full-year course at the high school level, it has to receive a full credit.

 

I also had to agree to treat the community college classes as equivalent to AP in terms of weighting the GPA.

 

So, while there may not be transcript police, there are sometimes rules that we have to agree to in order to participate in dual enrollment.

[Michelle_NC]

In NC, each CC course counts as a full HS credit and is weighted as an honors course, not AP.  So interesting how it varies from state to state!

[MarkT]

Try to match AP or local area/state HS DE class credits.

[Pawz4me]

In NC, each CC course counts as a full HS credit and is weighted as an honors course, not AP.  So interesting how it varies from state to state!

 

I don't think there's any rule for how homeschoolers in NC have to give credit for CC classes or how they weight them, is there?  I believe what you've posted is how public high schools do things?

 

Interestingly, the early college high school my youngest attends weights CC classes as APs and all their high school level classes are weighted as honors classes.

 

But I don't think it really matters, at least as far as weighting and GPAs.  Every university we visited with oldest DS said they take students' applications and look at grades and GPAs and reformulate using their own criteria so that everyone is on a level playing field.  And this thread is a very good illustration of why they do that, I think.

[Michelle_NC]

I don't think there's any rule for how homeschoolers in NC have to give credit for CC classes or how they weight them, is there?  I believe what you've posted is how public high schools do things?

 

I don't think its just for public schools - this is from the Career & College Promise handbook (the dual enrollment program in NC) and is written for all students whether they are in public, private or homeschools.

 

Q: Will the CCP students receive weighted high school credit for completing college courses?

A: All college transfer courses receive weighted (honors) credit, CTE courses, in general, are not eligible since they are not transferable.

 

Q: Do community college courses that count for high school credit count as a full credit or a partial credit?

A: College courses count as one (1) full high school credit. However, when a course sequence is required to meet content standards for a graduation requirement, the full course sequence must be completed to ensure students are eligible to graduate.

 

Q: Do courses in the college transfer or CTE pathway count as advanced placement (AP) courses for credit purposes?

         A: No, pathway courses count as honors courses for credit purposes.

[Pawz4me]

Do you have a link where it says it's for ALL students?  I'm pretty sure they're just laying out how it's done in public schools.  I don't think they can legally tell a private or home school how to weight courses.  Although not having the legal authority to do something has never stopped them from trying. ;)

 

And what you posted isn't even true for all public schools -- as I said in my earlier post, the early college high school my son attends (a public school) weights the community college classes as AP classes (two extra points).

 

I have read that NC is changing things so that AP classes will only be given one extra point, and honors classes a half a point.  But I *believe* that's supposed to start with next year's incoming freshman class.  I guess what you posted could be addressed to that, but I wouldn't think so this far out.