Are there any colleges that provides college courses while still in highschool?

Answered

There are 3ways to take college courses while in high school.

1. Dual Enrollment - Dual enrollment is different than direct enrollment because you are either taking a core or elective class that you need to graduate from high school with at your own school or at the community college or state university. For example, my high school had a language requirement and also a partnership with our local community college. So I signed up for French 2, 3, and 4 at my high school and also signed up for dual-enrollment at my community college. There was zero instruction from the community college and the only interaction I had was to pay the college credit fees out of pocket. I just took the French classes for 3 years at my HS with my HS teachers and classmates. But I received the 2nd transcript from the CC with 24 college credits and a 4.0 GPA. So I have redundant transcripts for the same classes. The other variation of this is dual enrollment where you take say a math elective at your CC like Multivariable Algebra, get a transcript from the CC, and then your HS applies it to your HS transcript as a weighted elective class that counts toward your graduation units. Again, this works smoothest if there is a pre-existing relationship with your HS and college.

2. Direct Enrollment - Is where you register for in-class or online college classes at your CC or State College for either core or elective coursework. Say you want to take Physics C because it's not offered at your HS. Then you would pay and register for the class and take it outside of HS. When you get your grades, you would work with your HS admin to add that to your transcript and grades. You would get a separate transcript and grades from the institution. This summer and fall I enrolled in outlier.org which is a new online platform that allows anyone to take college-level courses and earn 3 college credits and grades through the University of Pittsburgh. When I took these classes there were only 4 to choose from and now there are 6. The classes are online lectures and exams taught by a group of Professors from different colleges versus 1 instructor. So you get taught by between 3 and 10 instructors who have different teaching styles, blackboard, tablet, pen, and paper or just talking into the camera. The tests are all proctored by grad students who record your exam through your computer camera. I earned 6 college credits and have a 4.0 transcript from UPitt now. Taking outlier classes for me was less expensive than enrolling in my State college, say $400 versus $1200 a class and you do not have to pay for all the admin/lab/tech/building/health, etc fees as well.

3. Online higher education portal - For Physics specifically AP Physics 1 and 2 I signed up through eDX.org which is a portal containing courses taught by MIT, Harvard, UVA, BU, Davidson, etc. Some of the hundreds of courses offered are merely short topics like Intro to Modern Architecture where you get a certificate while others are legitimate courses that replicate the curriculum for HS and College classes like the ones I'm taking through Davidson NEXT (which is Davidson College's online program), and others still are deep dives into Quantum Programming (5 courses through Purdue U) or Supply Chain Management (6 courses through MIT). There are even 13 master's degree programs you can take through the portal through GTech, Indiana U, Purdue, UT Austin, BU, and ASU. Some previous posters have completely misrepresented eDX.org and gone as far as to state that their courses are meritless. This is far from the truth and in fact during the pandemic show colleges that you are intellectually curious and add to your academic spike if you venture out of your comfort zone, apply yourself, and learn something unavailable in your zip code. These courses cost anywhere from $50 to thousands of dollars. 3 credit AP or College courses would be in the low hundreds $$.

There is a fourth way but these are the least important. If you are affluent and enroll in a summer program at Brown, Notre Dame, or Harvard for 3 to 6 weeks, all these colleges give you 1 college credit for attending. That is one of the worst value propositions because you are paying like $6000-$8000 for 1 college credit. And these programs have are not competitive to get into and have no bearing on your admissions to the institution. They are no different than Trump University where they just leverage the brand name and collect as much money as possible from naive prospects who think they are getting a golden ticket.

Good luck with your junior and senior years.