How do we apply for Georgia dual enrollment funding on GAfutures?

What does the application pay for?

The award covers standard tuition, mandatory fees, and required books at a participating eligible college in Georgia, and it is offered in every term of the school year. Colleges are required to provide the required textbooks at no cost to participating students and to waive mandatory and non-course-related fees.

The Dual Enrollment Funding Cap is 30 semester hours, or 45 quarter hours, and the award is available for a per-term maximum of 15 semester hours or 12 quarter hours. Once your teen passes the cap, the college charges tuition plus a prorated share of the mandatory fees and book costs for the hours the program no longer covers. Some students with career-program coursework can pick up HOPE Grant or Career Grant funding after the cap, which is a question for the college’s financial aid office rather than for the counselor.

The Georgia state page covers how the cap shapes a four-year plan. This guide is about getting through the application itself.

How does your teen create the GAfutures account?

The account comes first, because the funding application pulls from it. GAfutures asks the user to click Create an Account, choose an account profile type, and enter the required information. A high school student, a current or prospective college student, or anyone applying for state financial aid creates a Student account. Parents and guardians use a General User account, and Georgia high school, college, district, and home study staff use an Education Professional account.

The student profile needs the legal name, email address, home address, date of birth, and Social Security number that the college and the state will match against. A Social Security number is not required to open the account, but GAfutures states that one has to be listed on the profile to request a high school transcript or to submit applications for state financial aid programs. A student without a valid Social Security number is assigned a GAfutures temporary identification number. When the Dual Enrollment Funding Application opens, the profile prepopulates it, so an error in the profile is an error in the application.

What is the Student Participation Agreement?

It is the parent’s half of the application. Before a student participates in dual enrollment, GSFC requires the student and the student’s parent or guardian to complete the Student Participation Agreement as part of the application process. After your teen finishes the student portion, the parent or guardian is emailed a link and signs the agreement electronically, or goes directly to the Dual Enrollment Parent Agreement page to sign.

Nothing moves until that signature lands, and it is the step families most often leave sitting in an inbox. A parent who signs the day the student finishes saves the counselor a round of reminders.

What is the course directory, and why does it decide the courses?

The Dual Enrollment Course Directory is the list of approved courses at eligible participating colleges. Colleges submit courses to Georgia Transfer, formerly GATRACS, and the Georgia Department of Education approves them. The directory covers core academic subjects, meaning English, mathematics, science, social science, and world languages, along with CTAE courses that align to the state’s Career Clusters and Pathways. Which category a course falls into is set by the first two digits of the high school course number.

The practical consequence is that the directory, and nothing else, defines what the state will fund. A course your teen wants that is not on the directory can still be taken, and the family pays for it.

Who does what, and in what order?

The sequence in GSFC’s own application procedure runs like this. The student completes the student portion of the Dual Enrollment Funding Application in GAfutures. The parent or guardian electronically completes the Parent Participation Agreement section. The high school counselor, or the home study program official, initiates the application process at the school’s end and selects the approved courses from the directory. The college, which has to have accepted your teen as a student, selects its approved equivalent courses from the same directory.

Two of those four steps sit with people who are not in your house. We ask families to finish their half of the GAfutures application in the spring, because the counselor has to pull each course from the directory before the college can match it, and that hand-off is where a summer or fall term gets lost while everyone assumes the other office has it.

When is the application due?

Complete the Dual Enrollment Funding Application before your teen enrolls in dual enrollment courses for the new school year. Each academic year’s application is valid beginning with the summer semester, so a rising junior planning a summer course applies on the new year’s application rather than the one that covered the spring.

There is also a hard back stop. The application has to be completed by the high school and the college no later than the last day of the college term, or the student’s withdrawal date, whichever comes first. Beyond that the term cannot be funded at all. Each high school and college also sets its own earlier deadlines, and those are the dates the counselor can give you.

Who is eligible?

Eleventh and twelfth graders may take any approved course. Tenth graders may take CTAE courses at a Technical College System of Georgia institution, or any approved course with an SAT score of at least 1200 or an ACT composite of at least 26. Ninth graders are not eligible to participate in the Dual Enrollment Funding Program.

The statute says the same thing, so there is no second route to go looking for. O.C.G.A. 20-2-161.3 defines an eligible high school student as one entering or enrolled in tenth, eleventh, or twelfth grade, and the only ninth grade in the section is a grandfather clause covering students the state had already paid for on or before June 30, 2020. The State Board of Education rule that carries the same definition applies it to the self-pay category too, so a freshman taking a college course in Georgia is doing it outside dual enrollment, at the college’s price.

Beyond grade level, the student has to be enrolled in and physically attending a participating eligible Georgia public or private high school or an eligible Georgia home study program, meet United States citizenship or eligible non-citizen requirements, meet Georgia residency requirements before the first day of the college term, comply with the Georgia Drug-Free Postsecondary Education Act, have approval from the high school or home study program, be accepted by the college, maintain satisfactory academic progress, and be under 22 on the start date of the term. Tenth graders using a test score should send it early, because GSFC has to have the score in the Dual Enrollment system before the funding application can be approved.

What happens if your teen withdraws from a course?

Withdrawals count. GSFC states that a student becomes ineligible to continue receiving Dual Enrollment Funding for future terms after a second course withdrawal, and that funding is not available to retake a course. An appeal is possible for extenuating circumstances such as serious illness, injury, or a death in the family, and it allows continued participation without restoring the hours. A junior who carries one course and finishes it is in a better position under this rule than a junior who carries two and drops one in October.

FAQ

What is the GAfutures dual enrollment application? It is the annual Dual Enrollment Funding Application that a Georgia student completes in a GAfutures account so the state will pay tuition, mandatory fees, and required books for approved college courses.

Who signs the participation agreement? The parent or guardian. GSFC requires the student and the parent or guardian to complete the Student Participation Agreement as part of the application, and the parent signs it electronically after the student finishes the student portion.

What is the dual enrollment course directory? The state’s list of approved courses at eligible participating colleges. Colleges submit courses to Georgia Transfer and the Georgia Department of Education approves them, and only directory courses draw state funding.

How many hours will Georgia pay for? Thirty semester hours or 45 quarter hours per student, with a per-term maximum of 15 semester hours or 12 quarter hours. After the cap the college charges tuition plus a prorated share of fees and books.

When do we have to apply? Before your teen enrolls in courses for the new school year. The application must be completed by the high school and the college no later than the last day of the college term or the student’s withdrawal date, whichever comes first.

Sources

• GAfutures, Dual Enrollment application procedure · the order of the four steps and the completion deadline
• GAfutures, Dual Enrollment eligibility · residency, the Student Participation Agreement, the age limit, and grade rules
• GAfutures, Dual Enrollment funding and award amounts · the 30-hour cap, the per-term limit, and charges past the cap
• GAfutures, Dual Enrollment course directory · what the directory lists and how courses are approved
• GAfutures, Dual Enrollment frequently asked questions · the 10th grade test scores, annual application, and the withdrawal rule
• GAfutures, General frequently asked questions · account types and what the profile requires
• GAfutures, Dual Enrollment program overview · what the award covers and the terms it is offered in
• O.C.G.A. section 20-2-161.3, the Dual Enrollment Act · an eligible high school student defined from tenth grade, and the June 30, 2020 ninth-grade grandfather clause
• Georgia State Board of Education rule 160-4-2-.34, Dual Enrollment · the same grade definition and the self-pay dual credit course category