The U.S. Federal Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) requires website operators to obtain parent or guardian consent before collecting personal information from children under 13 years of age. That’s no problem, once you get the form on file, your tween is good to go!
Continue reading “Under age 13? CLEP and AP are still options.”Category: HS4CC
Find College Credit: Business
Looking for college credit in Business? We have a list!
Continue reading “Find College Credit: Business”New Here? This post is for you!
Welcome
Welcome!! Earning college credit in high school helps thousands of parents make college a reality for their family. Before high school graduation, college credits are generally very affordable- some are even free, so you can save significant money when you start early!
Teens of every ability level can earn college credit, your teen doesn’t have to be an “A” student or genius! As you’ll learn, there are 30 ways to earn college credit in high school, and the unique characteristics of each way means that there is a college credit option for everyone.
You can learn the basics in a binge-worthy weekend, but we want you to stick around! There is a big community of parents here, and a strong team of volunteer experts. The longer you’re here, the more you’ll learn and the more expert you’ll become.
Sure, there are lots of ways to earn college credit, but before you pull the trigger, we want you to be the best guidance counselor for your teen. A little knowledge goes a long way in this pursuit, and we’re here to help you become an expert for your family.
Let’s get started!
Step 1
Watch the introductory video Homeschooling for College Credit 101. This 1-hour video gives you the best orientation and all the big pieces of the puzzle. You’ll leave the session fired up and ready to go!
Step 2
Get the Book – learn about college credit types. If you don’t already own Homeschooling for College Credit, you can pick that up from your local library or on Amazon. Be sure you get the 2nd edition – education moves at warp speed and the first edition is obsolete. The 2nd edition is available in paperback or Kindle (the audio book is only available for the 1st edition and not recommended!) Chapter 2 is targeted to teach you about credit types. Knowing the types will be one of the most important things you learn along your journey.
If you don’t have the book, you can Bookmark the 30 Ways to Earn College Credit in High School. (aka Chapter 2 in the book). Click on any of the credit types on the list to learn more about them. Not all college credits are created equally, and this page will serve as a resource you can refer back to time and time again.
Step 3
Join our community- find your state’s HS4CC group on Facebook. You’ll need to know if your state has a free or reduced tuition dual enrollment program. If it does, you’ll immediately want to connect with the parents in your state’s Homeschooling for College Credit Facebook group so you can learn about eligibility and costs. If your state doesn’t offer programs, you can still connect with others from your state to share support and resources for using out of state programs. Look up my state
Step 4
Understand Credit Laundering. Colleges are highly predictable in how they handle incoming credit, but people are exceptionally creative, and it doesn’t take long before bright parents to think they’ve found a loophole. Let’s look at that loophole I call Credit Laundering. Understanding how your teen’s college credit will be evaluated by a future college is ESSENTIAL.
Step 5
Read, read, read, watch, watch, watch, and ask, ask, ask! Go back into the various credit types and dive deeper into the pros and cons, how they fit into your educational program, and what they cost.
- READ- We have over 1,000 pages of free content on this website- each dedicated to helping you learn how to do this! Between the website and the book, Homeschooling for College Credit, you’ll get the confidence you need to navigate the process.
- WATCH- We have dozens of (free) recorded workshops covering the topics that matter to you the most. We also offer opportunities to attend live workshops on Zoom or occasionally in person.
- ASK- Your Facebook group is full of parents a little further down the path than you, but our moderating team are standing by ready to help. If you still have questions, you can reach out to me directly, and I’ll make sure you get pointed in the right direction.
HS4CC Celebrate Together
For those of you without Facebook, I wanted to share some of the encouraging wins posted to the main page this past month! Someday we’ll do the math, but I’m pretty sure this community has saved over a million dollars in college tuition!
Continue reading “HS4CC Celebrate Together”HS4CC Discount!
“Who I am Becoming” is offering a summer promotion discount code: summerhs4cc
and they are also running a “Making a Life” fall homeschool promotion: fallhs4cc
Associate Degree Course
Did you know? We have a new Summer Catalog of HS4CC courses!!
The Summer Catalog is OPEN NOW- August 26,2022.
Featured Course: Associate Degrees in High School
Is it to your teen’s advantage to earn an associate degree in high school? I’ll share the most important factors to consider when you’re trying to decide whether to collect college credit or roll it into a degree before graduation.
The Summer Catalog offers a total of 5 courses, all available through August 26, 2022!

Parent Question: Modern States for AP?
We’d like my daughter to take AP Biology next year. She can do it either through SC Virtual or through Modern States. Modern States probably offers higher quality and certainly offers more flexibility, what do you think?
Continue reading “Parent Question: Modern States for AP?”Find College Credit: Sociology
Looking for college credit in Sociology? We have a list!
Continue reading “Find College Credit: Sociology”Too much CLEP? Never!
Parent Question: We live out side the USA, how can we earn college credit?
What do you recommend as the best way to research options/tackle dual credit as Americans living out of the US? Our daughter is homeschooling and will attend college in the USA, but right now we live abroad. I’m not sure of the how to figure out our options as they won’t be related to living in a particular state (although we do own land in XX and use my parents address in XX as a mailing address in the USA…not sure if either of those makes any difference?). Thanks for any guidance!
Continue reading “Parent Question: We live out side the USA, how can we earn college credit?”Walls & Windows
Movie & Review: The Homeschool Awakening
As promised, this is my review following the film The Homeschool Awakening.
(my post from 6/14/2022) With apologies for not knowing who, one of our HS4CC families is being featured in this movie. This Christian movie is playing nationwide in Fandango theaters TONIGHT at 7pm (and last night- oops, sorry!). I’m planning to see it tonight and if college credit is discussed, I’ll write a review tomorrow. 😉 https://www.thehomeschoolawakening.com
This is only the second time I’ve seen a “real movie” about homeschooling (I saw Class Dismissed in 2015) so I for sure was very excited to go – my husband was my date. 😉
In my opinion, with the enormous scope of what homeschooling is, what a family does, what a family looks like, and what motivates a family to choose homeschooling…. I’m glad I wasn’t the one trying to capture that in one movie lol! Still, I think the overall message was super positive and very persuasive. I liked that it really minimized the importance of curriculum and emphasized the importance of developing your own goals for your family, since that’s an opinion I share! I also liked that they were deliberate in representing many types of families- all with their own flavors. This was a movie that featured primarily Christian families, who therefore often shared that their faith was part of why they homeschool, as opposed to promoting Christian homeschooling. Therefore, I think anyone of any faith/religion could enjoy the film.
I don’t know for sure, but I think that Teach Them Diligently and Yippee Streaming were probably paid sponsors/advertisers of the film. I really didn’t like the infomercial that followed the movie. Once the movie ended, there was a 10 minute “interview” by Kirk Cameron of the owners of Teach Them Diligently and Yippee. It was clumsy and lasted about 9 minutes too long. The sales pitch was really a buzz kill, I just wanted to get out of there and talk about the film- this was a huge distraction. It felt awkward not to stay for the whole thing, so I did, but you could tell others also wanted to leave.
BUT, I came for the college credit stories! At least one family featured in the film is a HS4CC family, and at least 3 of the families shared (a tiny bit) about how they brought college credit into their homeschool. I didn’t take notes, but remember the basics:
- One boy talked about how he studied independently and took tests for college credit. (AKA credit by exam, likely CLEP)
- One boy earned his bachelor’s from Thomas Edison State University debt free by age 18.
- One girl is earning her associates and bachelor’s now. She hopes to have her master’s in a couple years while she is still a teen.
The college credit aspect wasn’t more than a few minutes in the segment talking about college admissions. I get that homeschool parents really do want to know if their kids can get into college, so I thought that it was a good attempt to include some reassurances. Several families also emphasized that they weren’t pushing their kids into college, which is nice to hear too.
Would I recommend the movie to someone? Yes, but with a disclaimer. My disclaimer is that you’re looking at a highlights reel.
This movie is very happy, very enthusiastic, very warm, full of joy, carefree learning, and easy. In my 27 years of homeschooling, I’ve told people a lot of things, but I ‘ve never *ever* told anyone homeschooling is easy. I love homeschooling, and it’s worth doing, but anyone who undertakes such an important task feels some level of stress and pressure to do it well. So, there’s that.
Also, homeschooling is portrayed as an opportunity for adventure. There were a lot of scenes about travel abroad, outdoor sporting, seeing the country, etc. One family even sold everything they owned to live in an RV, while another was flying glider planes. Seriously, who wouldn’t want to do all that? I want to do all that! Take me! In my experience, homeschooling families can experience more financial strain, especially if they are a 1-income family with many children. I realize I’m generalizing, but I’m just reporting back that *to me* it felt a little like you weren’t giving your kids all the enrichment available if you were just sitting at home. Ex. check out the movie cover art picture above- “The world is your classroom!”
So that’s it! If you missed it, it might be available on a stream service in the future, but if you saw it, what did you think? (comment below)
Parent question: Do I need to write course descriptions?
Do I need to write course descriptions? Is this necessary, or just an exercise in creating more work on the Chief Administrator/parent?
Continue reading “Parent question: Do I need to write course descriptions?”What Does the “Freshman Scholarship” cover and is it enough?
We sometimes hear parents concerned about their teens earning freshman scholarships, meaning they want to make sure their college credit doesn’t disqualify them! Of course, it doesn’t, but lets we’ll look at what that freshman scholarship actually covers.
Continue reading “What Does the “Freshman Scholarship” cover and is it enough?”Your HS4CC Transcript Template
Find College Credit: Spanish
Looking for college credit in Spanish? We have a list!
Continue reading “Find College Credit: Spanish”Facebook Group Policy Change
Announcement:
The ambassador affiliate program through Studycom pays people each time they post the name Study(dot)com on a website, blog, Facebook page, etc. You can imagine how casually these links can be shared because it’s *literally* their name.
If that company is a favorite of yours, and you love to share to others, that is wonderful – I hope you make lots of money. However, you can’t share affiliate links inside any HS4CC group.
Obviously, people getting paid to give comments/ advice inside any of the HS4CC groups are not going to be allowed because of the nature of our community.
Moving forward, when you refer to Studycom in our HS4CC Facebook groups, you’ll need to do so in a way that does not generate the link. You can say “studycom” or “study” or “study(.)com” or any creative thing you can think of – but posting the ACTUAL link will be removed.
Be aware that HS4CC, Jennifer Cook DeRosa, or any of our 41 moderators are NOT in this program or any other program that pays for posts/comments.
AP REA Guides: Online and FREE!
You already know how much I love REA Guides for CLEP, but did you know you can use REA guides from their AP collection to study for CLEP, DSST, TECEP, UExcel, and other credit by exam products?
Continue reading “AP REA Guides: Online and FREE!”Parent Question: Publication date or copyright?
“You posted recently about CLEP tests undergoing revisions and how to know what REA book to purchase in order to align with the current test. I need a further clarification.”
Parent question: When can my teen start earning college credit?
When can a student begin to earn college credit? Some say 9th grade, others day 10th grade … the process seems a bit unclear. Does it depend on whether the student is using the Advanced Placement model, CLEP process, or community college process? Does it depend on what community college the student decides to attend? How does the student prove they are ready for college classes? Some schools mention an aptitude test to demonstrate college readiness, while others mention it but are willing to work with the family. This lack of clarity is a deterrent for us. I wish I understood this process better!
Continue reading “Parent question: When can my teen start earning college credit?”GPA on Your Transcript
HS4CC–> BS Degree at 17
Shared with deep gratitude to Misti our HS4CC Kentucky moderator, for her willingness to share her 17 year old daughter’s amazing story of finishing her BS at Liberty University!
Continue reading “HS4CC–> BS Degree at 17”Find College Credit: Psychology
Looking for college credit in Psychology? We have a list!
Continue reading “Find College Credit: Psychology”“Testing in” vs “Testing out”
One saves you time and money, while the other saves neither. Do you know the difference?
Continue reading ““Testing in” vs “Testing out””Parent Question: How do I show 2 colleges on our high school transcript?
Can my student be enrolled in two different community colleges? If so, how does this translate to a high school transcript? My goal is to see that, whatever path she chooses, she will be set up for success.
Continue reading “Parent Question: How do I show 2 colleges on our high school transcript?”