Many first-year students arrive to campus having already completed college-level coursework. While still in high school they may earn credit through dual credit courses, Advanced Placement examinations, and International Baccalaureate courses. For students and their families, these pre-college opportunities expose students to college-level material and represent a head start on a degree.   

However, there are also questions about the extent pre-college credit affects students’ transition to college, their progress toward graduation, the time required to complete a degree, and the amount they ultimately pay.  

To better understand these patterns at Ball State, IRDS examined the pre-college credit brought by ten cohorts of incoming first-year students. The study looked at who entered with credit, how much credit they brought, how they performed in their first year, whether they graduated on-time, how long they took to complete their degree, and how much they paid in tuition and fees.  

This blog series explores four questions from the study: 

1. How much pre-college credit do incoming first-year students bring to Ball State, and which students are most likely to enter with it? 
2. Does pre-college credit help students succeed in the first year? 
3. Does pre-college credit help students graduate, and does it help them graduate sooner? 
4. Does pre-college credit lower the cost of earning a degree? 

Each post will focus on the findings most relevant to that question. This page will be updated with links as the posts are published. 

In short, students who entered with pre-college credit generally had stronger outcomes (like better retention and on-time graduation rates) than students who entered without it. The advantages were also positively correlated with the amount of pre-college credit, meaning students were likely to have better outcomes the more credits they brought. However, the findings were more nuanced than a simple conclusion that pre-college credit automatically produces better outcomes. For example, a close look shows students entering with credit differed in their prior academic performance (i.e., high school GPA) and socioeconomic background. 

Readers interested in the complete methodology and detailed results can view the full report.