I hand carried Kelly and Christian’s high school transcripts into the Wake Tech Community College yesterday. The government schools and I think even the private schools have a way to do all that electronically, but they like to have the transcripts in a sealed envelope or hand carried to the adviser for homeschools. That is really understandable. They have no way to know whether it is valid or not. We also took in all the ACT and CLEP score documents. The adviser was able to enter them into the system and get us going even though none of it will be official until the scores arrive from the official sources in a couple of weeks.
The adviser with whom we worked was very nice. She has one boy currently attending Wake Tech. Her second boy just finished up his Bachelors Degree at UNC Chapel Hill in Physics and was accepted at Boston University for his PhD. It was fun to talk to her about that. Christian initially declared for pre-engineering associate degree, but after we talked to the adviser, looked at schedules, and discussed it all for an hour or so, we decided to rethink his plan a little. There is little room for anything other than engineering classes in the engineering program at both Wake Tech and NCSU. Christian and I both want him to be able to take a few electives in things like graphic design and programming.
I called my old professor and very good friend, Carroll Johnson from my Masters Degree at University of Texas at El Paso. Carroll said that since Christian probably will attend graduate school, his Bachelors degree field did not matter so much as the courses he takes. He said a Physics degree would allow him to go in a lot of different directions. That was good advice, so Christian and I tried to put a schedule together for a Physics degree. After about an hour, we realized that the course offerings at Wake Tech were insufficient for him to graduate in four years. He would have to go directly to North Carolina State University to finish according to that schedule. That is not possible, so we were back to square one.
Originally, when we worked with Campbell University, Christian was going to study Mathematics. It was not a perfect match for what Christian wanted to do, but it was not bad either. We decided to take a look at NCSU’s math offerings. We were amazed to find a program that appears to fit Christian’s undergraduate interests better than either Physics or Electrical Engineering. The Applied Mathematics Bachelors Degree program provides a 15 elective credit block for as a major for application of math and a 12 “anything” elective block. We think it will be a perfect way to prepare Christian for a broad range of future options at the same time it lets him follow some of his passions that are not so technical.
I am so interested to find out how things turn out with your incredible decision making. I heartily agree that you should let Christian follow some of his passions. My daughter is taking French which doesn’t necessarily pertain to her desire to take chemistry classes but does make learning more interesting. She is doing well and has been asked to tutor French this next semester. We still do not know where this will lead but she enjoys it. Taking so many required courses can make the journey tougher than it needs to be even when those tough classes are interesting.
I am curious as to how they react to the CLEP scores and having those tests fulfill requirements.
Thanks so much for sharing.
Hello Deanne. Thanks for the very nice note! It sounds like your daughter is doing great. This comment was particularly timely because we are having discussions about the need to have a well-rounded learning experience that does not include just one super interesting area of focus. In the spirit of that idea Kelly has decided to take French! I am glad to hear your daughter really enjoys it. As for making decisions relative to school, I have been feeling inept and inadequate to the task for about two weeks now, but we are working hard and getting closer to a consensus on how to get started. Thanks for the encouragement to keep writing about this.
As for CLEP, our community college accepts over 50 credit hours of Kelly’s credit (a year and a half), but NCSU will only accept about 18. The community college accepts all 18 hours of Christian’s CLEP credit, but NCSU does not accept any. It is not all lost, though. Chrisitan will at least have meet his two year foreign language requirement even though he does not get course credit for it. I think we are starting to get a workable plan moving forward. I will talk about it a little more as it solidifies over the next week or so. Our main challenge is to keep the focus on education rather than just on accumulating enough credits to get a degree!
Ken, you put so much into these decisions. I love reading about it. It helps me. I can flit around and paint and garden and make tinctures out of weeds, but math… science… preparing? I need help. Thanks for sharing! And it sounds like things are working out great for you all!