About FastTrack Advising

What the firm does

Two things, and they run in order. The first is the dual enrollment roadmap: a written plan for 11th and 12th grade with a course grid, a realistic college shortlist, the reasoning behind every recommendation, and thirty days of follow-up while your teen registers. The second is ongoing advising on a monthly retainer, for families who want someone in the picture through the rest of high school, where the work turns from planning into advising each term.

Alongside those, we speak to schools and parent groups about dual enrollment, and we deliver roadmaps under the name of independent educational consultants whose clients need one.

How a roadmap is built

Backwards from the career, not forwards from the course catalog. We start with three careers your teen would consider, work out the degrees that lead to them, then the colleges that are realistic, and only then the courses to register for next semester. Every course on the grid is checked against the transfer rules of the colleges the family named, using Transferology and each college's own transfer tool, so a credit earned at sixteen still counts at nineteen. The four steps, the three tracks, and what the retainer covers are laid out on how it works.

Sometimes the answer is to wait a term. A college grade earned in high school follows a student onto every transcript that comes after it, so a teen who is not ready for the pace is better served by a lighter start. When that is what the situation calls for, we say it on the call.

The sourcing standard

Dual enrollment rules are set state by state and run college by college, and they change. Every fact on a state page and a college page here is cited to the agency, statute, or college office it came from, and each page carries the month it was last checked against those sources. Where a figure is an estimate, it says so. Where a rule has an exception, the exception is on the page. Nothing here is a substitute for confirming the current version with the school before a family acts on it.

The same standard runs through the guides, the state programs, and the free resources: one question, a direct answer, and a source for anything a family would have to take on trust.

Where FastTrack came from

The firm grew out of a founder who earned 57 college credits in high school and then spent seven years running a Minnesota dual enrollment advocacy nonprofit that contributed to six changes in state law, and who has advised more than 210 students. That is the experience the roadmaps are built on: the system from the inside as a student, the rules from the inside as an advocate, and the families themselves one at a time.

Why is FastTrack's logo a knight?

In chess, every piece moves in a straight line, except one. The knight, the only piece that can jump over others, moves in an L-shape that many players find difficult to master. Similarly, students who participate in dual enrollment are following a less obvious path to get someplace faster. Mastering that move is what FastTrack Advising is for.