Advance Placement or College Credit Plus? Helping Your High Schooler Maximize Credits

Advance Placement or College Credit Plus? Helping Your High Schooler Maximize Credits

When it comes to setting a student’s schedule, there’s no one right or wrong answer.

It depends on what a student wants to do after high school. What they want to pursue as a career, whether they plan to attend school in or out of state and if they’re looking at selective institutions. For students considering Advanced Placement or College Credit Plus courses, the decision can feel even more complex. 

Advanced Placement and College Credit Plus courses both offer Ohio students college-level curriculum while still in high school, as well as the chance to potentially earn college credits.

College Credit Plus, or CCP, is the state’s dual enrollment program where students can earn both high school and college credit for a course. They’re paid for by the high school, unlike AP exams that could carry a cost for families. Both options can help students prepare for post-secondary education — and save money by letting them start college with credits in hand.

“Many of our CCP students receive associate degrees before the graduate from high school,” says Dr. Janice Taylor Heard, associate vice president of the College Credit Plus program at Cuyahoga Community College. “Many continue their enrollment at Tri-C post-high school for a summer to a year to complete their associate degree prior to transferring to a university. The end result is thousands of dollars in savings and decrease time entering a career field.”

AP courses and exams are national and standardized, overseen by the College Board, says Kelly MacLean, founder of the Kelly MacLean Achievement Center in Westlake. What she’s seeing is that they’re taking on more weight as colleges and universities move away from ACT and SAT scores. 

As AP courses take on more importance in college admissions, institutions are taking individual circumstances into consideration, MacLean says. They’re looking at how many AP classes a student takes, but also how many they have access to at their school and at what grade level.

“The more data points a college has to prove that a student is ready for the rigor of college academics without oversight from a parent, without a parent running to the store for poster board for a project or doing their laundry and all of those types of things, the better they can predict that they’ll have that student for the entire year, not just one semester,” she adds. “An AP exam, because it’s standardized, is a great data point for them.”

CCP can be a good fit for students who know they want to attend college in-state, as CCP credits are guaranteed to transfer to in-state public schools. 

Jennifer Collis, an associate provost at Lakeland Community College in Kirtland oversees their College Credit Plus program. She says students in the program have transferred to institutions across the country and they’ve been accepted to private schools in and out of state — including Ivy League institutions, despite the misconception that CCP might not transfer to out-of-state or selective schools.

Collis says students have to earn a certain score on an AP exam to earn college credits. But students who pass a CCP class automatically earn that credit without another test. Also, CCP offers courses of different lengths, including half-terms, and in different locations, including online.

Shawn Grime, executive director of the Ohio School Counselor Association, says he’s always trying to talk to students about their “endgame.”

Grime, who is also a counselor at Archbold High School in Northwest Ohio, says high school courses should be used to prepare students for their next step. And that applies to CCP and AP options, but also the subject areas students should be focusing on, based on their goals. “What are they ultimately looking to do?” 

“In addition to meeting the state standards for CCP pertaining to GPA, standardize test scores, or placement in college-level English and Math, parents should consider their child’s readiness for possible exposure in a course to “mature content” or subject matter,”  says Taylor Heard. “Students and parents should be prepared for a course experience that differs in pace and academic rigor than a high school course and require more study time outside of the classroom.”

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