HS4CC parent asks, “Super-senior year?” I have a student getting discounted dual enrollment tuition. Can we add a 5th year of high school to keep getting this discount? The answer is “maybe,” but I’m going to advise you to do something else instead.
Super Senior / 5th Year
It’s true that occasionally, a student will stay in high school for a 5th year, or what some call being a “super senior.” A super senior takes 12th grade twice. Should you do it? We see this in sports, and now (not surprisingly), we are starting to see it in cases where homeschool parents want to retain access to free or reduced tuition for as long as possible. I understand the motivation and drive; free is my favorite price, too!
Super Seniors Pre-2008
In the earlier days, taking a 5th year of high school was for one of two reasons:
- The student did not meet high school graduation requirements. This could be for any number of reasons (medical leave of absence, GPA below state standards, not enough high school credits, high school transfer across state lines resulting in credit loss, etc.). Hence, the school system allowed the students to take 12th grade again so they could meet graduation requirements instead of dropping out or getting a GED. It’s noteworthy that this almost never applied to homeschoolers unless they lived in a state with strict high school graduation requirements. In every other case, a homeschooled parent could write their own graduation requirements and allow their teen to graduate in every case.
- Athletes who are “red shirts.” A red shirt is an athlete who sits out a season while maintaining eligibility. This almost always applies to college freshmen (the red shirt would not play as a freshman and would start the clock as a sophomore, attending college for 5 years total), but some creative coaches do this in high schools as well.
Super Seniors 2008-2015
When Malcolm Gladwell published Outliers in 2008, he did a thorough exploration into the physical and academic advantages of redshirting ALL students, especially boys, and a movement was born.
Without debating the validity of these reported advantages, we saw US parents adopting these principles in two ways:
- Delaying kindergarten. At a time when students as young as 4 were routinely advised to start kindergarten, some parents were now choosing to wait until their student was older, 5-6-7. Among homeschooling families, parents could delay school until their state’s compulsory attendance age, and then when forced to “start,” some even took an unschooling (no formal academics) approach until they felt their student was ready. State-by-State Compulsory Attendance Table
- The rise of High School Super Seniors. 12th grade x2. Since parents of older students “missed” the opportunity to delay starting, the strategy to remedy the situation was to STAY IN school longer. Parents with 16 or 17-year-old 12th graders began to reconsider whether or not to graduate their student so young. Many parents found it reasonable that their students (usually boys) needed extra time to mature or develop before graduating high school.
I want to emphasize that Outliers did not suggest staying in high school longer, the data supported STARTING school later, which is not the same thing.
Super Seniors since 2015
By 2015, over 70% of public high schools in the United States offered dual enrollment programs of some type. These programs allowed high school students access to college courses (dual enrollment) at reduced or free tuition rates. Since the average high school student in the USA graduates with fewer than 7 college credits, and public schools desperately want to have strong high school graduation rates, the question of whether or not to stay in high school to earn college credit as a “super senior” is unique to the homeschool community.
In group schools (public or private), parents simply don’t have the authority to direct their teens’ education this way. A public school student must follow the district or state’s policies, so their participation in a 5th year is highly directed by the district.
Homeschools, however, do have this authority. It takes resourceful homeschool parents about 3 minutes to figure out two advantages of Homeschooling for College Credit.
- The longer your teen stays in high school, the longer you have access to free or reduced tuition.
- College credit earned during high school will not turn your teen into a transfer student, but college credit earned during a gap year does.
Those two advantages seem amazing, so why isn’t everyone doing a 5th year?
Since homeschooled students only represent about 5% of all high school students in the USA, colleges and universities are unaware of this loophole. It’s going to take the system a little while to catch on – and things like this are slow to change. A large college doesn’t have good communication between the operation of a dual enrollment department and an admissions department, in addition, students often take dual enrollment at one college while ultimately enrolling for a degree at a different college. Yes, we can probably get away with exploiting this loophole for at least another few years.
I’m going to ask you not to.
I wrote (and deleted) an entire section on the ethical compromises you’ll have to make to exploit this loophole. Since I’m a firm believer in taking full advantage of every policy while following the letter of the law perfectly, I realized that an argument could be made that one could exploit this loophole while following the letter of the law, so I decided not to talk about the ethics of this situation- that’s for you to resolve. I will only say that if your teen’s participation requires you to lie, then that’s clearly fraud. I would never want you to compromise the legal validity of your teen’s homeschool diploma for a few hundred dollars.
- If you live in a state with dual enrollment funding, be sure to read the law very carefully to make sure you’re acting legally when you add a 5th year. Download your state’s policy and save it in your records.
- EVERY COLLEGE AND UNIVERSITY IN THE UNITED STATES can rescind college credit after it is earned. They can even rescind or revoke an earned degree if they later suspect fraud.
- Colleges and universities may be able to place an academic hold on your teen’s transcript with cause. This will prevent the required release of prior transcripts required for admissions at all colleges and universities. In short, if you can’t get your old transcript, you can’t attend a different college.
Drop 9th Grade
This is the cleanest and easiest solution. It is 100% ethical, and I did this with ALL FOUR of my sons. It comes down to when you decide to start the clock. Since we didn’t start the clock until 11th grade, this strategy allowed them to graduate high school with more high school and college credits (yes, at reduced tuition) than they would have otherwise earned, and their academic record still has 4 years of high school on the transcript.
A college doesn’t care how old your student is, but schools care very much what grade level your student is in. This is often true because the college has policies or the state has policies that specifically qualify students who are in certain grades. If you enroll your student as an 11th grader, you have started the “clock,” and they will have only 2 years remaining on their eligibility. Sometimes a student’s 11th grade dual enrollment schedule only has 1-2 classes. This happens because the student might not have been ready, the parent might not have known about it, or the family wasn’t sure. Then, just as the student finds their stride in 12th grade, they realize their eligibility is ending. At this point, they can’t change their grade level without disclosing to the colleges. To add a super senior year is asking the college to extend the clock.
If you, instead, drop 9th grade from your student’s record, you now go into dual enrollment when your teen is ready, willing, and able to handle the work. You’ve done four important things.
- Your teen gets to start college classes when they are ready, which may be closer to age 16 or 17.
- You’re not asking the college to allow your teen a year to continue earning college credit, thus any risk of appearing fraudulent or needing special permission.
- Your teen’s high school transcript reports 4 years instead of 5, which is the norm.
- Your teen’s high school transcript is FULL of college credit, possibly even an associate degree, which reflects well on their college applications.
Before you consider this strategy, I want to emphasize that it is for homeschooling families. If your teen is not homeschooled, this will not work because you won’t be able to bring in the college credits at the rate you need to complete high school in 4 years.
Dropping 9th grade removes high school credits (1 math, 1 English, 1 science, etc.), but when your teen takes a dual enrollment course with a college, you’ll add back high school credits twice as fast. When you drop 9th grade, your student drops off the low-reward classes and replaces them with high-value dual enrollment credits.
A student taking high school English for 1 year earns 1 high school credit, but a student taking ENG101 and ENG102 in high school has earned 2 high school credits, not 1, so your student’s rate of credit accumulation is doubled.
Dropping 9th grade doesn’t result in less credit; it makes room for more.
High School Transcript (before)
| 9th Grade | 10th Grade | 11th Grade | 12th Grade | total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| High School English, 1 credit | High School English, 1 credit | High School English, 1 credit | High School English, 1 credit | High School English 4 credits |
High School Transcript (after)
9th Grade | 10th Grade | 11th Grade | 12th Grade | total | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hi | High School English, 1 credit | High School English, 1 credit | High School English, 1 credit | English 101, English 102, 2 HS credits | High School English 5 credits |
This strategy works for those of you with students who were “young in their grade” when they started school or if their birthday allows them to graduate high school at about age 18. All my sons graduated high school at age 18, so they were certainly still considered traditionally-aged high school graduates.
A second advantage of this strategy is that you calculate a weighted GPA. A student with strong grades will see a huge boost in their GPA because college classes are on a 5.0 scale, and a high school class is on a 4.0 or 4.5 scale.
I hope this strategy helps you consider a new way to maximize your teen’s Homeschooling for College Credit program.
