I received an email this weekend from a frustrated parent. Like most of us, her high school teen hasn’t picked an occupation or major yet, and they haven’t even started narrowing down colleges. This is an important answer for everyone with 0 college credits!!
If I could give everyone a single piece of advice (in a warm and friendly non-pushy “but seriously, do this first!” kinda way…..) it would be to bookmark the HS4CC Master List of College Credit and pay attention to the types!
Master List of College Credit
The website list is very important because while that list appears in Chapter 2 of Homeschooling for College Credit (in the book, it is called “30 Ways to Earn College Credit” but that number changes, so it hasn’t been exactly 30 for a while) and you might use that as a starting point, the book was published in 2018, and wow how things have changed since 2018! The bookmark is the BEST WAY to follow the current status and rank of every type of college credit you will encounter.
Step 1: Bookmark this page
Step 2: What do the types mean? The rank/type has nothing to do with how “good” a type is, rather it is based on likelihood of transferability in a world of unknown variables. In other words, the list is created for EXACTLY this situation! My ranking system allows you to predict credit acceptance when you don’t know your teen’s target college(s).
The higher up the list, the “safer” you are when there are unknowns. As you go down the list, those credits are going to be more limited in use, so you wouldn’t want to accumulate a lot of Type 4 credits unless you were planning to attend a college that accepted those credits.
Step 3: There is no one size fits all. If you find a class in Tier 4 and your teen would love it, then do it!! You are still a homeschool family and you still enjoy all the flexibility that comes with that privilege. Everything doesn’t have to “count” later- but put it in context. You have to be ok with that risk until you do know what kind of degree or college your student will attend. Once you figure that out, everything else falls into place.
Type 1: RA Graded Credit (Excellent Transferability)
Type 2: Credit by Exam (Good Transferability)
Type 3: ACE Credit (Limited Transferability)
Type 4: NCCRS Credit (Very Limited Transferability)
Type 5: Special Transfer
Type 6: Not Recommended
See all types of college credit provider and where each ranks on the list.
