Early College at Montgomery College
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Anonymous
| Is it more desirable for colleges for your high school student to go to MC for early college (jr/sr years) or stay at an above average (but not "W" school) and take 4-5 AP classes per year. Kid is current sophomore taking all AP and honors classes, 3.8 UW gpa. Kid doesn't have a strong preference either way. This kid also will be playing a college sport at the D3 level probably (only 1 other EC because the sport demands practice almost every day and weekend tournaments). Expecting them to go to a 2nd or 3rd tier school, not enough extracurriculars for top tier because of sport balance and keeping up good grades. Expect their SATs to be around 1400, maybe a little more, maybe a little less. But i don't know how their sport will play into this either (European students take all the D1 slots, so don't think that will happen)...trying to plan, first things first, MC decision incoming. |
Anonymous
| No idea but if your kid is heavily involved in a sport and not committed to a traditional high school experience, I can see the advantage of doing early college. |
Anonymous
| I have no idea why your family is interested in Early College. 4-year colleges certainly don't care about community college vs high school APs. |
Anonymous
New challenge. Set the kid apart/somewhat unique path. I have another child who is a senior/traditional route and the college admissions process has been eye opening. Having a good gpa and an extracurricular and sport just isn't enough for many schools. |
Anonymous
| MC sounds like a logistical nightmare. I’d only do it if my kid was unhappy at their HS. Also I think it’s actually more common to get credit from AP classes than MC for colleges outside of Maryland |
Anonymous
That is so not true. College credit is college credit. AP's are a gamble. Some colleges don't take many, some colleges only take 4's or higher and even a few that only take 5's. My DD had to use so many AP's for her electives in college and then she's like, why do I want to speed thru with no electives. That is no fun. She was in an engineering college who needed specific math and sciences. Not to mention so many people try and go to college taking the next level math or science and realize their AP class wasn't really a legit college class and they can't keep up with the next level as a freshman in college and go back and retake it anyway. I am not sure why AP's are so popular in MCPS. In NOVA most do dual enrollment |
Anonymous
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I have two high schoolers, one in EC, one not. Our home school is like the one you describe.
I think colleges are fine either way. I think there are elements of AP that are better and elements of DE that are better. My personal thinking is that humanities focused students are better off staying at their local HS. APs are more uniform and there are lots of humanities options. STEM focused kids can get much further and demonstrate significantly more rigor through a program like early college where there is no AP equivalent. EC lists where kids get in. It is everywhere from UMBC to MIT. Prepare yourself for a lot of people who have no experience with early college to weigh in with all kinds of false information. I have no idea why it is such a weird hot spot for some people. |
Anonymous
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My kids wanted to stay at HS to…enjoy HS. To be amongst their own peers all day. Clubs take place at lunch, the MC kids leave then so they can’t be part of clubs.
If your kid isn’t into the HS scene then they can’t do the early college route, but don’t force them to do that because you think it would be be better for college admissions. |
Anonymous
| *can* do the early college route (sorry autocorrect) |
Anonymous
| Early College is heavily career focused; too soon for high school kids to make those decisions. Focus on a well rounded solid foundation to give them more choice in the future. |
Anonymous
In what way? There are some small pre-professional programs, mostly at the Silver Spring campus, but the majority of the majors are math, chemistry, etc. And all of them require a full assortment of history, English, communications classes, fine arts credits, etc. |
Anonymous
| I’d add that it takes so many extra credits to graduate from early college as opposed to HS than kids are far more likely to have a much broader base to build from than a HS grad. |
Anonymous
MC has clubs too |
Anonymous
Not our experience at all. APs got my son credit no problem for many classes for his major. Transfer agreements for mont college https://www.montgomerycollege.edu/academics/transfer/agreements-and-information/by-institution.html#list Early college is helping Montgomery College financially. Not a bad thing but I don’t see the attraction unless the local HS is problematic |
Anonymous
| We heard UMD prefers students stay at their HS and take APs but your child sounds like they aren’t interested in UMD (and for the record my oldest chose DE at MC and still ended up accepted at UMD). My kids had good experiences with DE. They were able to take courses in subjects not offered by their HS that were related to their future majors. They also got a feel for college writing and presentation expectations and enjoyed the autonomy of college classes. The downside for my youngest has been that he doesn’t find his classmates at MC as focused as those at his HS (Wootton). His classes usually just have 2-3 HS students whereas DD’s classes years ago were all HS students. |