“My daughter is thriving in her online dual enrollment program. Should we just graduate her and let her enroll in college full time?”
This is a popular question, especially in the Homeschooling for College Credit community. It seems like a student earning college credit and successfully working through dual enrollment should graduate high school now and move ahead, but there are 7 major reasons your student should stay in high school through 12th grade.
- Shorten college, not high school. Homeschooling for College Credit teaches parents to cut the time their teens spend in college (expensive), not the time spent in high school (valuable and inexpensive).
- More control over courses. The longer you homeschool, the more say you have over what your student takes.
- Free or reduced tuition: During high school, your student has access to free or reduced tuition. Once you graduate them from high school, they will switch to paying full price. A college course costs about $0 – $500 when taken during high school. After high school, expect to pay $500 – $4,000 per course. (EACH!)
- GPA boost: Taking college classes and using a weighted GPA scale gives a big boost. A weighted A in a college course is a 5.0 instead of a 4.0, which can raise the GPA so high that your student may become eligible for merit aid.
- Start / Stop / Pause. During high school, your student can pause or pick up courses as desired. Maybe one class this term and three next. Once they enroll in college, their program may require full-time enrollment, and this is often woven together with their financial aid (grants, scholarships, loans).
- Freshman status: College credit earned during high school is not counted as transfer credit, but all credit earned after high school will be.
- A big head start on the degree. A resourceful parent can help the student finish 25, 50, or even 75% of a degree while still at home.
One good reason?
There are actually two.
- Hit the wall. The first is when your student has clearly met all of their high school requirements and has maxed out on all applicable credits that can be earned in advance. In this case, graduating early is a real consideration because your student can’t make a dent in their college program at this point, and you are just killing time until they can begin. There are other factors, of course, like costs and maturity, but the argument is no longer about Homeschooling for College Credit and is one of whether ot being college.
- Catastrophic event. I hate adding this second situation, except that it happened to a family I helped a few years back, and we determined it was best for their student to graduate high school early. In this case, the family lived in North Carolina, a state without graduation requirements, and their student was in 12th grade. The family experienced a catastrophic financial event and they were planning to move to New York. The mom would have to return to work, and the student would either enroll in public school or try homeschooling independently. Because of the difficult educational requirements of re-entering school in New York, homeschool compliance, and documentation of prior high school coursework that would be required, I advised the family to graduate the student early. Since this was a very good student and they had a lot of college credit, it made more sense to simply graduate the student now, issue a homeschool diploma (as a North Carolina resident), and move to New York as planned – without getting involved with the New York school system at all. This is what they did, and their student started college almost immediately.
As with most things, there are pros and cons to consider, but in almost every situation, it makes the best financial sense for you to Homeschool for College Credit at least until the end of 12th grade, and take advantage of the low cost college credit ahead of time. This strategy helps tens of thousands of families every year make a huge dent in the cost of college.
