You don’t know what you don’t know.
That’s the case with a lot of things in life. That’s why knowledge is power. Knowing that something is even possible to do gives you the upper hand to make better decisions.
Ten years ago, when I learned that early retirement was something that was legitimately possible to do, we made changes to make it a reality. Before then, I just assumed that you needed to be some kind of billionaire for that to be a possibility at all. Hint: It doesn’t and the personal finance community (including this site) is a great way of learning just how feasible this can be for so many folks if you’re willing to learn and take action.
But again, it all comes back to just knowing something is possible. This applies to health, wealth, prosperity, and so many other facets of our lives.
Recently, I started digging into something newer to me that’s been blowing my mind. That’s the idea that one can earn college credits while still in high school. But I’m not talking about a few credits here and there – I’m talking about possibly shaving a year or two off of a college education before even graduating from high school!
While this can be done as a regular high school student, homeschoolers probably have the upper hand on this one. The flexibility in both time and curriculum makes this very achievable for a homeschooling student, which is why we don’t want to miss this golden opportunity.
I’m going to tell you our strategy for our 14-year-old daughter to earn college credits, which includes taking advantage of at least a few different paths to get there.
Why go down this path?
No, the question really should be “why not go down this path?” We’re only just beginning to understand what this is all about, but it seems to be almost all upshot with very little downside.
Our daughter, Faith, started homeschooling back in 2019 at the age of 9 when we first moved to Panama. It was intended to just be a temporary bridge until we were ready to move her to an international school there. However, she took to it well and it also gave us more control of her curriculum and flexibility with her schedule. So she’s continued homeschooling ever since even after we moved back to Ohio in 2022.
This year is Faith’s freshman year of high school. Over the past year or so, we had told her that it was up to her whether she wanted to go to regular high school or continue homeschooling. She has a pretty good understanding of the pros and cons of each choice.
Initially, she was planning on going to a regular high school for the social side of things. But to be honest, she’s doing just fine on this front with a good group of friends here. She made great friends during her horseback lessons here (both homeschoolers and kids who attend regular school). Plus, she continues to talk to her friends from Panama all the time.
In the end, she decided to continue homeschooling, which I was secretly happy about. I know this isn’t for every kid or every family, but it’s worked extremely well for us.
Outside of that though, homeschooling provides some good opportunities to earn college credits that are harder to get while attending a regular school. That’s not to say that students in regular high schools can’t do this, but the flexibility in both the homeschooling schedule and curriculum simply makes it a little more ideal to take advantage of these possibilities.
I think it goes without saying that if you can earn college credits to use later, it’s worth investigating. Although these options we’re exploring will involve a little more work from Faith, it’s probably not going to amount to too much more. And the benefits are huge:
This could end up helping her shave a year or two off of college, not to mention tens of thousands of dollars in tuition costs.
As I’ve continued to find resources out there on the subject of how to earn college credits, one resource seems to stand out more than any other:
Homeschooling for College Credit (HS4CC )and their Facebook group, HS4CC Ohio Homeschooling for College Credit are fantastic.
Not only is this site chock full of good information, but the organization is a non-profit, has a neutral bias, and their funding comes from grants, private donations, and product sales. In a nutshell, it appears their interests are more aligned with those of homeschooling parents, which is good.
So most of what I’m about to discuss is based on what I’ve learned from that site and Facebook group. HS4CC’s 30 Ways to Earn College Credit page is a wonderful starting point, too.
Although nothing’s written in stone, here’s the gist of what we’re going to focus on for Faith to earn college credits…
Dual enrollment
This seems like it’ll be the bread and butter for most of what we’re hoping to accomplish.
Dual enrollment is when high school students take college classes while still enrolled in high school.
This is cool for a few reasons:
- Can replace a regular high school class
- Accumulates fast
- Can be free (or low-cost)
When you enroll your kid in a college English class, for instance, they’ll earn a high school credit for it, but they’ll also earn college credits to go with it. So they get the 1 credit for high school that they need, but they might earn 3 credits for college. Nice!
Here’s where it gets fun though… a class in high school is generally a year-long event whereas it’s usually only a semester in college. So, normally, English 1 would be a year-long extravaganza by high school standards, but we’re knocking it out in half a year as a college class instead. That means that for the second half of the year, they could then maybe take English 2 as a college class.
So think about this – in the span of a school year, instead of just earning 1 high school credit for English 1, the student can earn 2 high school credits (English 1 and English 2) and 6 college credits. That’s amazing!
Then there’s the best part – this can be cheap or free to do. Every state has its own program, but Ohio is 1 of 17 states that make dual-enrollment classes free for high school students. Ohio’s program is called College Credit Plus (CCP) and homeschoolers are eligible for it.
The cost for an Ohio high school student to take a college class at an Ohio public college is $0 (my favorite number!). For regular high school students, textbooks are also covered. Homeschooling students “are responsible for providing their own textbooks but may apply for state funding for tuition.” Not sure why there’s a difference, but that’s a concession I’m more than happy to make.
Plus, if Faith decides to stay with an Ohio college after high school, the credits will transfer completely…
Thanks to Ohio’s Transfer to Degree Guarantee, many entry-level courses earned at an Ohio public college are guaranteed to transfer to any other Ohio public college. Credits earned at private colleges, or those that you want to transfer to an out-of-state institution, will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis by the institution you are seeking to attend.
College Credit Plus – FAQs for Students & Families
With this, we’d likely look at Kent State University as the way for Faith to earn college credits because it’s nearby and they offer a fair number of remote classes, too, which seem appealing. And because Kent State is considered a “Regionally Accredited” school, credits should transfer to other universities pretty well, too, if she decides to go out of state somewhere.
The other option that we’re considering is Arizona State University (ASU). Why ASU specifically? Because they’re a very unique college that helps cater to high school students looking to earn college credits. Here’s why they’re worthwhile…
- They offer a ton of remote classes
- It’s only $25 to enroll and take the class (textbooks included!)
- When you’re done with the class, if you like your grade, it’s $400 to have it added to your transcript
Yeah, you read that right. If you take an ASU Universal Learner class and don’t do well, you just walk away with $25 less in your wallet and that’s the end. But if you do well, you let them know you want it on your transcript and pay $400 for that. That’s a win-win for sure!
And in a world of crazy-high higher education prices, $425 for a class (with books included) is a steal! And ASU is also a Regional Accredited school so transferring credits later should be fairly straightforward as well.
So what does this mean for us? It means that starting next February, we’ll apply for Faith to take 2-3 classes. Classes at KSU would be free through the CCP program and the college credits are guaranteed to transfer to other colleges in Ohio. But we’d still likely need to pay for books (I’d guess about $100-200/class?) and they may or may not have the remote classes we want.
ASU would be $425 per class but that includes books. And considering that you’re only paying that if you do well in a class, that makes a lot of sense. Plus with so many choices for remote classes, you should find most of what you’re looking for to earn college credits.
If you haven’t guessed, I’m leaning more toward ASU, but I want to do more investigating first. We could also look at her doing classes at both KSU and ASU if we wanted. I believe you can do more than one college at the same time in Ohio (in some states you can’t), but of course, that makes life a little more complicated as well.
Whichever way we go, this is a golden opportunity for Faith to earn college credits in high school. We’ll need to get everything lined up, but Faith’s on board so she would start doing dual enrollment classes starting next year for her sophomore year of school.
CLEP exams
So dual enrollment will be the main way for Faith to earn college credits, but we’ll also keep CLEP exams in our back pocket. If you’re not familiar with the College Level Exam Program (CLEP), it lets a student take a standardized exam to gain credit for that particular subject.
HS4CCC recommends that if you go this route, you may want to consider lining this up with your student’s current high school curriculum. So if they’re already taking high school Algebra, they could also be studying for the Algebra CLEP exam alongside it.
Then the student schedules the CLEP exam (preferably with a free voucher through Modern States). They pass the exam and it’s put on an official College Board transcript. If you fail, it’s kept private and not put on the transcript and you can even retake the exam if you want.
Once you’re done with high school, you can send your College Board transcript to hopefully earn college credits. According to HS4CC, 76% of colleges accept CLEP exam credit. That’s pretty good, but that’s almost a quarter of colleges that don’t.
So, if we find that Faith will be taking a class where this would be a good fit, we’ll look at this option. Otherwise, the bulk of our weight will be for the dual enrollment.
Foreign language exams
Faith’s been learning Spanish for years now (Lisa and I, too!). She started before our move to Panama and has continued ever since. She’s far from fluent, but she’s doing very well. Because of that, it’s sort of a gimme that she takes an exam or two to earn college credits for it.
On the HS4CC site (I told you this site was good!), they discuss several options you have to take these world language exams:
- Advanced Placement Exam
- American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL)
- CLEP Exam
- NYU Foreign Language Proficiency Exam
This is kind of a no-brainer since the exam can be free to $150 or so (except for the NYU-FLP exam, which looks like it would be a good chunk of change).
Other options
There are a lot of options to earn college credits while a high school student. Here are 30 Ways to Earn College Credit.
Of all of these on that page and besides the ones I’ve discussed so far, I think the only other ones that make sense for Faith are the Advanced Placement (AP) exams.
I remember taking AP exams in high school, but I was oblivious to how this worked – I was naive to everything. Assuming nothing’s changed on that front, the AP courses look good on your high school transcript when applying to colleges but that’s about it.
However, you can take AP exams after your AP courses and that’s a way to earn college credits (assuming you pass!). These are standardized tests taken at specific testing sites with test administrators.
HS4CC says that about 85% of colleges accept AP exam college credit… that’s a little better than the CLEP exams! But they’re only available once per year so that could be a big ball of stress for your kid if they want to take more than one at a time.
Anyway, Faith is taking AP courses right now, so why not make them even more worthwhile?
Why is this only phase 1?
The title of this post mentions that this is “phase 1.” Why would that be?
Trying to strategically prepare for college can be a lot. Helping guide Faith to earn college credits is just part of the battle. The way I see it is that the plan will involve a few phases:
- Phase 1: Help her earn college credits
- Phase 2: Try to maximize our financial situation
- Phase 3: Grants and scholarships
We’re just starting phase 1 and I hope this post explains it a little better.
With phase 2, I want to work on our strategy to plan how our money should flow. I don’t know much about this, so I need to research it more or maybe even work with a professional. I do know that the Student Aid Index (SAI) on the FAFSA, which used to be the Expected Family Contribution (EFC), looks at money in our different accounts and previous tax returns.
I want to learn more about how the lookback period works and learn if it might make sense to restructure our finances to maximize the aid that Faith receives. This needs to be done sooner than later just because of that lookback. There might be nothing we can do or maybe there’s something, but it’s worth digging into just in case.
Then it’s onto phase 3… focusing on grants and scholarships. There are so many of these out there and the key is finding out what’s available and applying for as many as possible. We might even be able to leverage AI to create custom letters for the applications.
I’ll be sure to write about these other phases as well as I’m working on them.
I’m still new to this so there might be some other things we should focus on, but we don’t know what we don’t know. Hopefully, as we dig into this further, we’ll find out if there are other facets we should look into as well.
That’s the plan, folks.
Let me reiterate this – I’m not an expert in all areas of a high school student setting forth to earn college credits… yet. But because I know this is a possibility, I’ll keep doing what I do – I’ll continue leaning on the folks who do, learning more, and taking action on our end.
We’re just starting to create our general strategy for Faith to earn college credits. If you have any other thoughts, I’d love to hear them!
Plan well, take action, and live your best life!
Thanks for reading!!
— Jim
This is so interesting Jim! I love the way you think. In phases. We are also considering home schooling once our daughter finishes 5th or 6th grade. With more options available online, and her not liking school in general, we’ll be keeping a close watch on your blog. Lead the way!
Thanks, Aaron – homeschooling’s definitely not a great fit for every family, but if it is, it can be a real winner. I’ll keep posting and you keep reading! 😉
Jim, we are looking at and planning a similar strategy. Down in Florida homeschoolers have access to a PEP Scholarship which has been a game changer for us. They also have a dual enrollement program that offers nearly free undergrad if you can maintain a certain gpa. You guys might want to move to Florida =).
Dang, that’s a nice perk, Nadeem!
Jim,
I think this is great, but I do want to advise a couple of things (as a college professor who has helped hundreds of transfer students to my university). First, you might want to focus on one institution for credits (e.g. a local community college or ASU). Second, if you are thinking about a university in-state (e.g. Ohio) you want to investigate the transfer credits for these classes. For example, most states allow you to do a seamless transfer from community college to university; whereas some schools, if you transfer from another school, they might take the credits, but that doesn’t mean they will slot into a specific place (e.g. ASU’s first year english might get her credit at Kent State for first year English or it may not). If you want to I can chat with you about this further. Typically, Faith could earn an Associate’s Degree from a CC and then transfer to a 4-year instiution pretty seamlessly. Also, the advantage of being in a school district with dual enrollment is that the school district/state typically will pay for it. Just my two cents.
Thanks, Jason – I definitely appreciate your input! With that said, we’ll try to stick with just one institution. I’m guessing that will be ASU – even though it adds in some cost, the benefits are really significant. That’s good information on how the credits transfer as well. We don’t know the specific school she’s going to go to, but we’ll take a couple of the schools in the running and look into how the credits would be slotted.
Great research Jim! We are definitely going to check out the ASU option for our homeschooled daughter. I will have to see if we like the grade, and pay $400 for the college credit, if we can reimburse that through her 529 account. Thanks for doing all the legwork on this topic.
Thanks, DL – if you read the comment from DAP, those tax credits might even cover the costs of the ASU tuition… bonus!
I think you already know about this, but check this out as well. This could allow Faith to go for free. https://education.ohio.gov/Topics/Ohio-Education-Options/Home-Schooling/College-Credit-Plus-for-Home-School-Families
Yup, that one’s been the holy grail for us for figuring some of this out (if we do KSU or another Ohio school for the dual enrollment). Thanks, my friend – much appreciated!!
My friend Laura took a lot of college courses in High School.
She was 16 when I first met her while she was lifeguarding at Lifecenter Plus. It shaved a couple of years off. She went to Akron U.
She graduated last year with a degree in teaching.
My son took courses online when he was deployed with the National Guard. He got his degree and then started on his master’s. He got his master’s and is working on his PhD.
All of his schooling is paid for by the National Guard – even now that he is retired from the NG. That’s an option open to a lot of young people that is way overlooked. They talk about forgiving student loans – – they’ve had that for years.
That’s awesome, Rich! You’re right that there’s been ways to earn college credit for free/cheap for years. I wish I had been less naive back when I was a teenager to understand all of this – I definitely would have taken advantage of it. Hopefully Faith can graduate from college without much school loan debt on her shoulders. That’s a huge head start!
I love your initiative, Jim. First, you applied it to achieving FIRE, then as an Expat in Panama, and now to help Faith get a head start on college credits. A clear example of a Winner’s Mindset. Faith is fortunate to have you as her Dad.
I am pretty awesome. 😉 Nah, we’re just figuring it out like anyone. Like I said at the beginning, you don’t know what you don’t know, so I want to find out what that stuff is that we really don’t know so we can try to make life a little easier.
I hope you’re enjoying the road trip – keep the Instagram photos coming! 🙂
I loved the dual credit program for both of my boys here in Texas. They graduated high school with their high school degree and 63 hours of college credit and their associates degree from our local junior college. One transferred all the hours to TCU and one to Texas A&M. There are a couple of things to think about and research if they affect you. Going to a private school such as TCU we had to have the syllabus for each class and apply for the school to give us direct credit. They did end up accepting all of the hours. I would suggest collecting the syllabus and keeping in a digital file. Going to a public school such as Texas A&M, they have to accept you as core complete if coming from a Texas school where you are core complete. While this is great because now you are junior classification, can register earlier for classes, get better football tickets, you also are not able to change your major because you will be over the amount of hours during which they allow you to change. If you are sure about your major, its all good but if not, its a problem. That is not true for AP hours, you get to choose when to accept them and when not to. But not for dual credit hours. Event though you technically have an Associate degree, you apply as a Freshman entry, not a transfer student. Also, all of the hours may not apply to your major, my son is an engineering major for example, his first required math class was Calculus 1, so his College Algebra class only applies as elective hours, not towards his actual major. My son is now a senior by classification, but taking junior classes in Engineering, and will graduate approximately 1 year early. Overall, a very positive experience, but you do have to work around a few of the things that can catch you unawares. Happy to help if anyone needs clarification or information.
That’s a fantastic head start to college your boys got – congrats on that one! Sounds like the devil can be in the details if we’re not careful so I’ll be sure that we try to learn everything we can about things and then adjust as needed with anything odd that creeps up. Great information – thanks for sharing, Kelli!
Might also want to check out the podcasts on this topic (and home school in general) that Josh over at Radical Personal Finance has. You may get some value out of some of his thoughts on how to do this.
I actually know Joshua and listen to his podcast here and again – he’s one smart guy! I’ll be sure to dig into some of his episodes in case I missed something good. Thanks, Monty!
Here is my 2 cents as I have already got the tee shirt….
Have her go to a community college and get her associates. They offer a lot of classes on-line and are very flexible. The state rule for Ohio is that if you have your associates, any state school has to take you and give you credit for those classes. If she wants to go to a private school, that can be a little more challenging but not necessarily. Obviously her major will play a role in how much time she can cut off. I know someone that will get her criminology BA in 2025 one year after high school. My youngest will get his electrical engineering degree from CSU in 2025, 3 years after high school. His last semester this spring will only be 6 credits. So he cut off about 1 1/2 years. Also, there are programs at the community college that allow you to get BA’s and BS degrees from a partner university for certain majors. Or at the least they have pathways for a lot of programs.
I would personally skip AP classes. One, you have to pay for the exam. Two, you wait until the end of the class to take a 3 hour test that you only have a 50-60% chance of passing. Three, it depends on the score you get whether the school will give you credit and how much. Most state schools you need at least a 3. Private is 4-5 alot of time. Much better to take a class, get graded throughout, get a final grade and get credit.
If you want any more info about Ohio, let me know. I’ve helped others through this process. People have said I should have been a counselor….
That’s a lot of good info, Scott, and congrats on the kids crushing it! Thanks for the info on the community college associates degree path. I’ll need to consider this as a possible option as well. It seems like there are a lot of great paths that can be taken, which is great.
And yeah, the AP exams didn’t seem like that exciting of an option but your points really put it into perspective.
Thanks, counselor – if I get stuck figuring this out, I might take you up on your offer for help! Much appreciated!
You got this Jim!!! A few additions to add to your list. Optimizing for FAFSA should be easier with the new version that came out this year. I don’t remember having to add your assets like we had to do in previous years. It seems like it’s very much earned income focused now. This should be perfect for FIRE practitioners. Also, don’t forget the additional tax credits like the AOTC and the Lifetime Learning credit.
I believe you’re right about the new version of the FAFSA if I remember right from some podcast episode I listened to where folks were discussing it. I had heard of the Lifetime Learning Credit but not the AOTC – that’s a real bonus! I just looked them both up and if we go the ASU route, the AOTC alone could make the classes taken free as long as she’s taking a half load, which might be just a couple classes. Thanks for the heads up on these!
In addition to CLEP, you should be able to use ACE, DSST,TECEP, etc.
It seems to me that it would be more likely that whatever college she chooses has a limitation on how many credits she can transfer in in general (because the universities want to make more $$$) vs a certain type of credit not counting.
https://www.degreeforum.net/mybb/index.php is a good resource.
Thanks for the info, TJ – I added that site to my bookmarks to check out. I’ll definitely be taking a look to see what the limitations are on credit transfers as we start going down this path. That would be one unpleasant surprise to find out later on down the line! 🙂