college reputation for under graduate vs earned credits vs graduate schoolAnswered
My kid is a Junior at a high school which gives high school diploma + an associates degree. He has taken college classes, good GPA, SAT score.
For undergraduate, how valuable is an Ivy or a Great private school admission as a 1st year freshman Vs. Good public university admission as 3rd year junior using the earned college credits from the high school.
If he really wants an Ivy degree, he can aim for it for Graduate program.
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1 answer
Most Ivy League Freshman Admits do not have Associate Degrees but rather have a very deep complete set of HS courses either APs/IBs and a very deep resume of extracurricular activities and essays which set them apart from other HS applicants. Some colleges like Brown and Williams have tough AP credit policies that allow ZERO credit for APs. And I'm not versed in knowing if they have the same policy for college courses taken outside of their campus but it very well maybe so. I know at Harvard they only give you credit if you have scored a 5 out of a maximum of 5 on an AP exam, no credit for less than that.
https://www.brown.edu/academics/college/degree/policies/advanced-placement
https://apstudents.collegeboard.org/getting-credit-placement/search-policies/college/4118
What I do know is that all Ivys and Elite college consider anyone applying that has a previous Associates degree ( or someone with more than 24 College credits or the equivalent of 1 academic year) to be a transfer student if they are applying with the college course work on their transcript so I would write to each school he is interested in applying for to see whether it is better to apply without the college courses or Associates degree or not. And also to get clarification if any of his coursework would be counted for credit. I know that the admit rates for transfer applicants are sometimes 5 times harder than freshman admit rates. For example, it's 0.97% (1 out of 100) at Harvard as a transfer versus 4.92% (5 out of 100 for a regular freshman admit).
If your question is which type of institution will give him the most credit for his Associate's course work, it's definitely a large public university. Ivy and Elite colleges want you to take all their coursework and it's rare that they would give you college credit for courses you take at a community college or HS that offers college courses. I know that sometimes even if you have taken say Calculus at a State College, a school like Columbia might only give you an advanced placement to a higher maths course like Differential Equations or Stochastic Processes but no college credit for the Calculus course you already mastered if that makes any sense.
Lastly, it's up to him if he wants to apply to Graduate School at an Ivy League University, I can't weigh in on that.
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Thanks for your response. It is helpful