Dual Enrollment
Dual enrollment gives high school (designed for 10th through 12th grades) students the opportunity to attend classes on a college campus and earn credits that will apply to both their high school and college transcripts. Students who wish to take advantage of the provisions of dual enrollment should be sufficiently mature enough to function in the college environment, as certified by their parents and school officials. In order to be fully qualified for the dual enrollment program, the student must achieve scores on the college placement test to exempt them from any “college preparatory” courses. The agreement waives the cost of registration and tuition, but the student is still responsible for the cost of lab fees and books. Currently, FFCA has dual enrollment agreements with Polk Community College, Pasco-Hernando Community College, Hillsborough Community College, and Valencia Community College. Parents should schedule an appointment with Mr. Lawson at least six weeks before classes are scheduled to start to complete the application and to allow time for testing.
Courses taken through Dual Enrollment are counted on the student’s high school transcript as credits used for graduation, and are used again as college credit hours toward their Associates Degree for college. For example, a student who takes ENC1101 College Comp I at PSC instead of English III earns one credit in English for high school and three college credit hours toward his/her college degree. The amount of high school credit varies by course, but almost all of the courses available count in both places.
Step 1: Before enrolling in classes, the student and parent must complete and sign an Application for Admission for Early Admission and Dual Enrollment Students. This form must also be signed by the school’s guidance office so someone will need to contact the administrative office and request that the appropriate form be sent to you. This is also a good time to review what classes the student may want to take at the college level.
The Dual Enrollment Course List is a PDF file produced by the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship for use in determining what courses count for credit, what subject area they apply to, and how much credit the course is worth.
Dual Enrollment Course List 09-10.pdf
Step 2: The next step is taking the CPT (or College Placement Test) at the college. The student must obtain a qualifying score on the CPT, ACT or SAT before they will be admitted. To take any course, the student must pass the Reading and Sentence Skills sections of the test. The Math portion is required for science or math classes. Students who are not at least half of the way through Algebra II should not expect to pass the math portion of the CPT, as they are testing for entrance into College Algebra. The CPT is not a timed test, and may be retaken in thirty days if not passed on the first attempt. Students are encouraged to review using the practice test produced by Polk Community College and/or St. Petersburg Community College before they attempt the actual test.
Below are the links to several practice tests.
www.polk.edu/SERVICES/images/pdf/cpt.PDF
www.spcollege.edu/central/Title_III/precpt/precpt.html
www.spcollege.edu/webcentral/admit/Placement1/Arith1.pdf
Printable arithmetic test with solutions
www.spcollege.edu/webcentral/admit/Placement1/Algebra1.pdf
Printable algebra test with solutions
www.spcollege.edu/webcentral/admit/Placement1/reading.pdf
Printable reading test with solutions
www.spcollege.edu/webcentral/admit/Placement1/Sentence1.pdf
Printable sentence test with solutions
Qualifying Scores:
Reading: CPT 83 ACT 18 (Reading) SAT 440 (Critical Reading)
Sentence Skills: CPT 83 ACT 17 (English) SAT 440 (Critical Reading)
Elementary Algebra CPT 72 ACT 19 (Math) SAT 440 (Math)
Step 3: Assuming testing went well, and you have already discussed courses with FFCA, wait for the signup day for dual enrolled students and hope the classes you wanted are not already full. Because regular students get first choice of classes, it’s a good idea to have alternate classes
picked if your first choices are already full. Class registration dates for PSC are listed on the calendars on the left of this page.