If you’re using Studycom in your homeschool, there are three important things you have to do in order to make sure your teen gets college credit – missing one means not getting the credit you expected.
Studycom is an online business that offers courses for learning and potential college credit. Since many users just take the classes, it’s not necessary to go through the extra steps and cost unless you’re trying to get college credit. That said, if you ARE trying to get college credit, there are 3 things you HAVE TO DO so you assure a smooth and seamless credit acceptance later.
1. Choose the right pricing plan
It’s a little tricky to find Studycom’s pricing plans on their website, but if you’re trying to earn COLLEGE CREDIT, you have to use their plan called College Accelerator. This program looks the same as the other learning options, but the big difference is that you’ll take a proctored final exam at the end. The College Accelerator plan currently costs $199 per month and limits you to TWO final exams per month. That doesn’t mean two classes (you can enroll in unlimited classes) but it means you can’t complete more than 2 exams per month as part of your membership. Be sure to use our partnership coupon for your first 3 months. It brings your cost per credit down from about $33/credit to only $23/credit.
HS4CC families receive 30% off three months of your College Accelerator program when you enter our partnership code JenniferCookDeRosa at checkout.
2. Pass the class with 70% or better
In order to get college credit, you have to pass your class with 70% or greater. A simple breakdown of their point system shows how this is usually doable for most students, including those who may not test well or have exam anxiety.
Grading breakdown for courses without assignments
| AREA | POINTS POSSIBLE |
|---|---|
| Quizzes | 100 |
| Proctored Final exam | 200 |
Quizzes are open book, and you can use all 3 of your attempts to get 100% on each of your quizzes (recommended) so you need only 110 points (55%) on your final exam to achieve college credit.
Grading breakdown for courses with assignments
| AREA | POINTS POSSIBLE |
|---|---|
| Quizzes | 100 |
| Assignments | 100 |
| Proctored Final exam | 100 |
Quizzes are open book, and you can use all 3 of your attempts to get 100% on each of your quizzes (recommended) so you only need 110 more points (55%) between your assignments and final exam to achieve college credit.
3. Choose a partner college
I can’t stress enough how important it is to choose one of their 40 partner colleges when accumulating college credit at Studycom. This type of college credit is not easily transferred, so choosing a partner college not only guarantees that your credit WILL TRANSFER, but you’ll be able to use their transfer tool to go line by line and know exactly how each course at Studycom will come in at your target college.
An added benefit when using a partner college- when your teen finishes high school and enrolls as a degree seeking student, many of the partnerships have a tuition for participants. My second son received 10% off all of his tuition and fees after high school using this strategy! Since many of the partner colleges allow you to transfer in up to X amount of credits, resourceful high school planning will go along way towards reducing the cost of their college degree in a big way.
I don’t know how accurate this is, but, I read in another forum somebody saying that they only signed up for the college (accelerator) plan at the point they planned to take the exams (versus paying for it when they were not currently planning to take any of the exams.) They said they would only sign up for the pricier college accelerator plan when it was absolutely necessary.
Yes, that is an option. They allow you to change plans whenever you like. If you’re going slower, that makes a lot of sense. If you’re going faster, it’s actually cheaper to do both classes plus the 3 a la carte exams at $70 each. When you do the strategy you describe, you pay $60/mo and then upgrade to $199 for the test(s) up to 2 per month. So you’re *still* paying the $199, but you’re also paying $60. Again, that makes sense if you’re going slowly and using the classes at a regular semester’s pace (say 16 weeks). In that case, you’re paying $60 each month you’re NOT doing an exam, and then when ready you pay for the “college accelerator” plan. You’ll have to do the math both ways and see what makes sense. I’m going to write about this in a future post, but what you could do if you’re really trying to stockpile credits for as low cost as possible, is use Studycom for classes your teen already took for high school credit and do THOSE slowly (free without your account) and then have them cram-jam the 5 classes in 1 month. With the coupon at $132 plus 3 tests at $70 ($342 total) you’re getting 15 college credits for $23 each! There is no way to do get that low using the other strategy, which will end up being well over $100 per credit. Hope that helps!