If your student is planning a supersenior year, dual enrollment just got trickier.
In the past, community colleges in some parts of NC (such as mine) allowed superseniors to take free dual enrollment classes, so long as they hadn't already completed two years of dual enrollment. Recently, however, these colleges have started being firm about blocking superseniors from taking any dual enrollment classes. Has your area become stricter, too?
Read on for more details!
But first, what is a supersenior year anyway, and why consider doing one?
Super-wha? And Why?
If you’ve been following FoxbridgePrep webinars, you know that we often encourage families to consider taking advantage of homeschooling’s flexibility by extending high school for an extra year – often called a “supersenior” year.
Supersenioring has many benefits:
Further growth in an extracurricular the student isn’t ready to leave – maybe speech and debate, or a unique internship opportunity
Investing another year of ACT/SAT study to maximize scholarships
Shoring up a transcript with additional classes to position best for college applications
Taking time to apply to more scholarships
Enrolling in AP courses or free dual enrollment classes in order to earn more college credit and shorten a four-year college degree to three or even two years
Supersenioring isn’t for everyone, though! For example, one of our kids went through high school and college quickly, rather than more slowly; this pace gave her extra time for a masters degree and extended work in ministry before settling into being the mother of our grandchildren. *smile*
However, for two others of our children, supersenioring was a Godsend. That extra year in high school gave each of them experiences and scholarship opportunities which opened doors to make their first-choice college possible financially.
So What’s the Problem?
Recently, there has been a change in the implementation of North Carolina policy in some areas of the state. Many homeschoolers (myself included) were not aware that NC even had a policy against superseniors taking dual enrollment, because it was so commonly allowed, even with families who were upfront that they were taking a fifth year. I want to make sure everyone knows the info that I just discovered!
The community colleges have always been strict about a limiting how MANY years students can take free dual enrollment - it used to be 2 years, and now it's 4 if the students pass certain "gifted" criteria. The question at hand is not the number of years taken, but WHEN they can be taken - whether students can use some of their free dual enrollment allotment during supersenior year.
According to the 2023 NC CCP Reference Manual, “high school students participating in Career & College Promise [the NC dual enrollment program] may not delay high school graduation to continue participation in the program.”
That is to say, a high schooler may not take any dual enrollment classes during a supersenior year, no matter how many semesters of dual enrollment the student has or has not already completed. I called and spoke with CCP administrators at Wake Tech and Durham Tech, and they both confirmed the policy. Local families have reported that community colleges are specifically asking what year their student entered ninth grade, to make sure they aren't using dual enrollment during a fifth year.
Maybe there’s a way around this, I thought.
I asked, “What if the student doesn’t take any dual enrollment classes for the first 3 years of high school; can they then take classes in 12th and 13th grades?”
No.
“What if the student repeats junior year instead of taking a supersenior year – that is, they take 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 11th grade again, and then 12th grade – then can they take dual enrollment in the last two years of high school?”
No. Rules state that CCP students must be “successfully progressing towards high school graduation,” so the state views a repeated year as disqualifying them.
“Can a student do the free dual enrollment program in their senior year, then pay for classes in their supersenior year?”
No. Not allowed.
Well, I thought, maybe The College at Southeastern in Wake Forest is still flexible. They aren’t a public NC college. All four of our children took classes there and loved them, two of them during supersenior years.
Nope, Southeastern isn’t allowing superseniors any more, either.
I don’t see any way around it; if you live in North Carolina, you can still take a fifth year of high school, but you can’t take any community college classes during it.
So what is a homeschooler to do?
You could just graduate your child in four years, normal-fashion.
Some homeschoolers suggest just changing the year you call "9th grade" - eg. if you used to call 2020-21 freshman year and 2021-2022 sophomore year, you just relabel things so 2021-2022 was freshman year. I don't love this approach. If you clearly labeled and presented your student as a sophomore in a particular year, it seems too late to rewrite history. We want to be above reproach in our transcripts, especially considering that our kids are watching our approaches to difficult situations. However, some families have always fluid about grade levels (witness the homeschool child who is asked, "What grade are you in?" and responds with a confused stare - "Uh... you mean in math, or reading?") If yours is one of those families and you never labeled the child as purely 9th or 10th grade at a particular time, then it's legitimate to assign the transcript years now as you feel appropriate.
If your child isn’t yet in 9th grade, consider not labeling him as a 9th grader when he hits age 14. Call him an 8th grader again. Maintain your flexibility as long as possible. He can still take high school classes in 8th grade and they will count on his high school transcript, but by extending middle school, as it were, you give him the benefits of an extra year of education without the dual enrollment complications. Later, if you decide that you want him to graduate at 18, he can always skip one of the years of high school. No problem.
Explore out-of-state, online dual enrollment opportunities. Call colleges for more info!
Bluefield College does not mention any grade restrictions on dual enrollment, and their tuition is only $100/credit hour. I would apply with a subject-oriented transcript rather than a chronological one.
Liberty University Online Academy does allow superseniors, with certain age restrictions: the student must apply by age 19 and must still be under age 20 as of August 1 of the year he is starting. (So if you are taking courses in Fall 2023, you have to still be age 19 or less on 8/1/2023). Tuition is $549 per 3 credit hour course. Courses run for 8 weeks.
Your student could graduate from high school in four years, then spend a year taking regular community college classes before moving on to a four-year college of choice.
***Be cautious with this approach, though:
1) Colleges generally charge more for regular students than they do for dual enrollment students.
2) If a student takes even ONE college class after high school graduation, many colleges will then view him as a transfer student when he applies for admission, not as an incoming freshman. Transfer student scholarships are much lower than incoming freshman scholarships. If you think your student is likely to qualify for merit scholarships, then it could do more financial harm than good to take community college classes after high school graduation. It all depends on your circumstances.
Of course, you could still decide to do a fifth year of high school. Even without dual enrollment classes, supersenioring still offers benefits like internship and service opportunities, better test scores, and expanded time for scholarship qualification. Students can still take AP classes in that final year of high school, and there are a lot of good AP options out there (eg. Potters School and PA Homeschoolers). This won’t work as well if you were hoping to take advanced courses beyond AP level, though, like Calc 3.
I want to apologize to families in recent seminars to whom I gave inaccurate information about supersenioring with dual enrollment. This new enforcement caught me quite off guard, as I have known many students who took dual enrollment during a 5th year of high school. I wonder if the recent surge in homeschooling has led to more policy strictness.
Regardless, I think the moral of the story is – always ask the college on their policies, no matter what a friend or advisor has told you. Even if that advisor is me.
Have you tried online college courses you would recommend? Has your teen done a supersenior year? Has your state tightened up dual enrollment rules? Tell about it in the comments!
Photo by Metin Ozer on Unsplash
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