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Wednesday, May 3, 2006
Dual Enrollment
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Someone mentioned this on the previous thread. It seems too good to be true. A motivated student takes a course at a nearby college and gets high school credit and college credit. Here’s the 411.
There may be a downside to Dual Enrollment. A couple of years ago I was doing one of those “Wow, it’s hard to get into UGA!” stories and a high-ranking admissions officer at UGA told me Dual Enrollment does not help toward college admissions the way AP and IB do. Why? For starters, college courses vary widely depending on institution and instructor, and there is no standardized exam or curriculum. Also, the admissions officer said his office had tracked kids who opted for Dual Enrollment over AP or IB and found they did not do as well in college as those who took AP or IB. He said he was especially unimpressed with Dual Enrollment courses taken at the local high school, when a professor comes to the school to teach a class of high schoolers. These courses tended to be not enough like “real college courses,” the admissions guy said.
Take this with a grain ‘o salt, just something to consider. He is just one person, and he left UGA for, I believe, Florida. I’ll put in a call to UGA and see if this is still their line of thought and report back…
Meanwhile, do you like Dual Enrollment? Parents? Teachers? Counselors? Admissions people? Kids? Tell us your experiences…
