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The benefits of online college credits for your high schooler
I remember from the moment I hit high school age, everything I was told by my teachers was, “This goes on your permanent record, and affects entry into college.” It was scary. Now I have friends whose kids are going off to college, and my kids are not that far away from college, and the idea scares me. College doesn’t have to be scary, and you can transition your child into college seamlessly and without spending a fortune with online college credit courses.
(This post has been sponsored by Ed4Credit, all opinions and suggestions are my own)
Online college Credit courses let my kids learn college expectations without high stakes
When I hit 8th grade with my kids in my mind I hit the road to college. I started them on higher expectations, closer to what is expected in high school with a mind to prepare them for college.
My children now submit their work online for me to grade, which is a whole new world for all of us.
Taking an online college credit course is the next step. Especially from a place like Ed4Credit, they allow self-paced classes, and they’ve got great support in place for their students.
Ed4Credit has all of the materials together in one place. Unlike my local community college or many other online college credit sites, it’s all included in the flat fee of $195.
That gets you the textbook, the review materials from Quizlet (which I think I might want to sign up for with my kids right now), the tests, and a whole slew of supplemental materials that I haven’t even looked through yet.
I sat down with Superman, who wants to be an engineer of some sort, and showed him what will be expected of him in college for math. He has a bad habit of zooming through his materials, so this was a good way for him to learn you can’t just do that.
Side note, I was editing this post and Princess saw what I was doing and had a minor freakout on the idea of taking college classes, “Mom, I’m only 11.” I sat her down and said, “Number one, this is not right now, and number two part of the reason for taking online college classes is to show you college isn’t a big scary thing. You can do this. I looked at the requirements for some of the classes and you could do this if you put your mind to it right now.”
Affordable online college credit courses
We have a local homeschool co-op here that has an application fee, plus a monthly fee for classes, and that is not including books prices. To compare the two, the local co-op price was, last time I checked, $50 a month, plus the price of the books, for this class roughly $150, and the registration fee of $25. The class for a semester is from August to December, so $250 +$150 +$25= $425 for one semester for one child.
To take the same class at our local community college is $225 plus books, which is estimated at $120. Hearing the horror stories from some of my friends, I think $120 is low. So the cost at our local community college is roughly $345.
No matter which way you add this up, Ed4Credit saves you at least $150. Their classes are only $195 with textbooks included. There are some classes where you have to pay for lab equipment, but otherwise, that’s an amazing deal!
Accredited Online College Credit Courses
The Holy Grail for homeschool high schoolers is dual credit, you take the course for high school credit AND get college credit at the same time. I was in public school and that was just beginning to be a thing when I was taking my AP classes, with the classes I took in high school, I entered with 15 college credits.
Ed4Credit is accredited with over 2000 schools (I originally left off a 0, it’s 2000, not 200, a bit more impressive), has ACE accreditation, which I’m learning is a big deal, and will work with you if the college you’re interested in isn’t on the list to see if you can get credit for your work there.
My plans with online college credit
As I looked through Ed4Credit’s courses, I made note of the courses my kids in particular would be interested in. The Writing and Literature classes would be great for Princess who still struggles to understand what is expected of a proffesional author. The math classes would be great for Superman who wants to be an engineer and will need lots of math classes for college, best to get those out of the way earlier rather than later. There’s some amazing classes for running a business that will be great for Batman’s plans to open a restaurant.
In reality, all of the classes listed are perfect for getting general study classes out of the way. You can easily look through all of these and see any of them being a part of your college plans.
I’m also going to pick up their free ebook 5 ways to get alternate college credit.
Order your own online college classes
As I said, the process is simple, just pick a class, and order it. There’s no application fees, nothing like that.
HOWEVER, I do have a special treat for y’all. Use the code Homeschool18 to get 20% off your shopping cart for the month of October 2018.
Comments
2 responses to “The benefits of online college credits for your high schooler”
Wow, this is really tempting 🙂 Unlike Princess, A is dying to try a real college class, but, I think, she will have a chance to take an AP class (or two) next year when she is officially in 9th grade. We’ll see how she likes that (I expect that she will)
You should give it a try. I tried out the Algebra class since we are taking Algebra, and it was interesting to see how much I remembered from my high school algebra classes.
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