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The 30-credit worksheet

Thirty transferable credits is a full academic year, at a community college or a university. This grid is how you find out whether your teen can get there, and it asks the question families most often skip: does this specific course count at the college your teen will attend?

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Before you fill it in

Write two or three target colleges at the top. If you don't have any yet, write the closest community college, the closest public university, and your state's flagship; they're the most common landing spots and the easiest to check. Then, for every course you pencil in, look it up in the receiving college's transfer tool (Transferology covers many of them) and write what it comes back as. "Accepted as elective" and "counts toward the major" are different answers, and only the second one shortens a degree.

11th grade, fall

Course College Credits Counts for HS graduation? Transfers to target as
Term total Counting toward a degree:

11th grade, spring

Course College Credits Counts for HS graduation? Transfers to target as
Term total Counting toward a degree:

Summer after 11th

Course College Credits Counts for HS graduation? Transfers to target as
Term total Counting toward a degree:

12th grade, fall

Course College Credits Counts for HS graduation? Transfers to target as
Term total Counting toward a degree:

12th grade, spring

Course College Credits Counts for HS graduation? Transfers to target as
Term total Counting toward a degree:

Add it up

Total credits planned
Total that transfer to the target as more than an elective
Gap to 30

On screen, a course counts when its transfer note says something other than "elective", "no", or "unknown". On paper, you do the adding.

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Three things the grid usually reveals

Electives don't add up. A transcript full of interesting courses that all land as "general elective" gets a student to 30 credits on paper and zero semesters off in practice. The general-education core (composition, college math, a lab science, a social science) is where transfer is most reliable.

The summer term is doing a lot. Many families get to 30 only by using the summer after 11th grade. Decide early whether that's realistic for your teen.

The target college changes the answer. The same course can count toward a major at one university and vanish at another. If the target changes, redo the transfer column. It's an hour of work that can be worth a year.

The 30-credit worksheet · FastTrack Advising · https://fasttrackadvising.com/resources/thirty-credit-worksheet · By FastTrack Advising

About FastTrack Advising

. FastTrack Advising works on dual enrollment and nothing else. We help families choose college courses a high schooler can take now that will still count toward the degree later, we check every course against the transfer rules of the colleges they name, and we stay in the picture through registration so the plan gets used. When the answer for a student is to wait a term, we say that too.