By Charlyne Nguyen
Students have many standing choices when it comes to what kinds of classes they can take in order to earn college credit here at Fountain Valley High School (FVHS). These include AP classes, concurrent enrollment and dual enrollment. To see which option fits best for each student, read this article.
When doing dual enrollment, in particular, students have the opportunity to earn not only college credit through Goldenwest Community College but also high school credit, which slightly differs from how AP classes work.
“While students do earn high school credit, they do not get a bump in the FVHS GPA,” College and Career specialist Irene Yu said. “AP courses are given a GPA bump for the FVHS diploma. Students will need to take the AP exam in May and earn a 3, 4 or 5 for the exam to earn college credit.”
Despite dual enrollment courses not offering students a chance to boost their GPA, there are other benefits of doing dual enrollment to consider. For example, many dual enrollment classes offered to students are ones that aren’t normally part of regular high school course options.
FVHS alumnus Serena Hom took a dual enrollment American Sign Language (ASL), which isn’t taught at FVHS, and shared her thoughts on the class.
“My experience [in ASL] was wonderful! It was after school for [three] hours and I took ASL 1 & 2,” Hom. “My teacher was honestly so amazing and the kindest human being ever. The class consisted of students from the [Huntington Beach Union High School District]… so I got to meet a lot of new people and of different grades.”
This year, most dual enrollment class times have been cut nearly in half compared to the previous years. Instead of three-hour classes, many students may find themselves being in dual enrollment classes for about an hour. Other courses may meet for longer depending on which class a student takes.
Due to COVID-19, most classes also meet around twice a week on Zoom, which is different from prior years because they used to be held on Huntington Beach Unified High School District (HBUHSD) campuses.
Another thing to consider about dual enrollment is the fact that it’s open to all high schoolers including freshmen. By contrast, FVHS students are normally able to take AP classes starting their sophomore year.
“If you start early enough, you can graduate a semester or even a year early, which also saves money so I highly recommend taking them!” Hom said. “They’re also way easier classes to take during high school rather than college, so [I] would encourage all students to take at least one to save time during college.”
Any student who plans to go to community college and transfer to a four-year college should also consider taking a dual enrollment class.
“I’m in a community college, and I do want to transfer and getting those units in kind of earlier was helpful in potentially transferring earlier,” said Taylor Cruz, an FVHS alumnus who did dual enrollment.
Dual enrollment classes are also usually held two days a week, so if students like the idea of having a particular class only a few times a week, they might want to take that into consideration as well.
Students considering dual enrollment should note that dual enrollment isn’t going to be a walk in the park.
“Students who can balance their current academic coursework and extracurricular activities, and would like to earn college credit, would be good candidates for taking a dual enrollment class,” Yu said.
If students have other things going on after school, they shouldn’t feel pressured to take a dual enrollment class.
“If you’re already busy with clubs and stuff…, it’s not a necessity to take it. It’s if you have time,” Cruz said.
One last thing to keep in mind is that the difficulty level of each dual enrollment class depends on a student’s strongest subject.
“It could be different for every class because ASL is obviously… a humanities class,” Cruz said. “It’s not, like, heavy material, and it’s a beginner ASL as well.”
To find out more information about dual enrollment, students can visit the College and Career Center’s dual enrollment page on fvhs.com or contact Yu at iyu@hbuhsd.edu. The deadline to register for spring 2021 dual enrollment courses is Jan. 30, 2020.
