UC Scout, Tilden Prep, Stanford Online, Concurent Enrollment
Our high school doesn't offer several classes that my kiddo is interested in taking. I've heard that high school students can take extra classes at UC Scout, Tilden Prep, Stanford Online, as well as at a community college using the Concurent Enrollment program. If you have had experience using any or other similar programs would you please share your experience, particularly with level of quality of the classes/instructors. Thanks for your time.
Aug 14, 2024
Parent Replies
Well, my kids have done 3 of the 4 options you list. The first thing you should understand is that if your student takes a college course, it becomes a part of their college transcript, for better or for worse. So thinking in terms of college applications, I wouldn't necessarily have my kid enroll in a community college course just because they might be 'interested' in the subject, unless you are pretty confident that they will earn a good grade, unless applying to strong academic universities is not the plan.
UC Scout is totally online, with some help available - so it depends on whether or not your kid can learn well this way. One of my kids did fine, the other did not. Tilden Prep was great to help one of our kids fill in a needed course they couldn't get at their high school, and was in person, but was also very very expensive. One of our kids did a community college course, one did a university course in the summer, all while in high school.
I guess I would ask, what is the end goal? If college admissions are not a factor and your student just wants to take interesting classes, any one of these programs may do fine. I'm all for having kids explore their academic interests. However, if they think they might like to apply to Cal or UCLA or a LAC with a low acceptance rate, then you will want to proceed with caution to ensure that they won't be overwhelmed by the course in addition to their regular studies. In other words, you don't want it to negatively impact their GPA. Good luck!