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@mike08
0 answers, 0 votes
 • 4 years ago •
Admissions Advice
[edited]

Will earning an Associate Degree in High School help or hurt my application to competitive Colleges?
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Background: I am a 10th grader in a public high school beginning to take Dual Enrollment classes at my local Community College toward the end of earning an A.S. in Computer Science. I am pretty interested in CS, but I am also interested in Law and Music, and I am usually an A-/B+ student in STEM subjects. I want to earn this degree because CS is an extremely applicable and relevant skill to have, and can still be applied to the other subjects I am interested in. I am also interested in what the rigor of these courses has to offer for my personal and academic growth. Is completing this degree for these reasons going to help my application to competitive colleges, or is my time better spent elsewhere? Thanks! :)

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@chxm33
269 answers, 257 votes
 • 4 years ago[edited]

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[🎤 AUTHOR]@mike084 years ago [edited]

Thanks for the information! Just to clarify - all my class averages are A range, and my unweighted GPA is 4.17 (because of A+s). I just feel as though STEM subjects are harder (to me) than Social Sciences (I should have been clearer on that in my question).

With this clarification, would this degree be beneficial if applying to out-of-state public schools, such as the UC system, or when applying to colleges that are less competitive than Ivys/top 10 schools, but that are still selective?

@arielUC254 years ago

For the UC system, note that they do accept up to 60 credits (I believe) from community college. So you can clear your gen ed requirements and potentially graduate in 3 years. In fact, one student I know who went to UC Berkeley to study Data Science is going to graduate in 2 years!!!! because of the credit they got from the A.S.

It definitely helps, not just for admission purposes!

@arielUC254 years ago

Also I checked certain Ivy League/similar caliber universities... they cap at 30 credits (except for Stanford which doesn't accept any)... and the community college classes have to pass a rigor test.

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