Help Me Finish: When your teen has a solid target or is in 12th grade.
Is there such a thing as too many early credits? Actually yes! Once your teen accumulates about 30 college credits, planning and matching are really important. At this stage, your teen needs a solid target. It becomes harder to use unplanned credits at this point because the general education requirements across all colleges can differ so much. If you want to be sure all your teen’s college credit counts towards a degree, now is the time to narrow and zero in on a target if you haven’t already done so.
Examples of a solid target:
- Wants to attend college at [fill in the blank].
- Wants to major in [fill in the blank].
- Intends to pursue a career in [fill in the blank].
- Has a non-college target in mind [military, apprenticeship, own business, etc.]
At this stage, with a solid target in your sights, you can now disregard all of the general “best practices” general HS4CC advice and zero in on exactly what YOUR student needs to do to hit THEIR goal. Once the target is in place, you no longer have to worry about keeping options open. Keeping options open competes against hitting a target, so this phase is when you focus.
Teens without a solid target are advised against earning more college credits.
If your teen is starting or finishing 12th grade without a plan for after high school, it will be really beneficial to use this time to take classes for high school credit that explore career options, goal setting, gap year options, or even job training.
U.S. Department of Labor: Online Career Look-Up Tool (The best site!!)
50 State Homeschool Graduation Requirements
Graduation Dates Matter: Diplomas & Degrees
Super Senior Year (5th year of high school)