High School students in their pajamas can enhance their college applications.
Colleges love to see that a high school student has taken online courses even if no credit is awarded for the course. Online courses help your student demonstrate they can do college-level work and show their motivation to learn beyond basic curriculum requirements. By taking online courses, students can also explore interests in a particular profession or field of study. Students can also opt to take online classes that can earn them college credit.
Below we’ve listed some courses that can be taken online for credit and no credit. Some are free, some aren’t. This is not a comprehensive list, but a mere sampling.
Free online college courses for no credit:
Coursera
Coursera offers courses from the top universities, for free to everyone. Current courses come from Princeton University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, and University of Pennsylvania. Courses range from the maths and sciences to poetry and world music.
edX
Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are teaming up to offer free, online, college-level courses under a joint superbrand known as edX. MIT currently offers web-based courses featuring discussion forums, short videos, and laboratory simulations, all under the guidance of MIT professors and teaching assistants. Harvard plans to officially announce its first courses in the summer and begin offering the courses in the fall.
Open courseware at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
Johns Hopkins is a respected medical school offering a selection of popular courses which would be of particular interest to students who plan to study medicine, or a related field.
Udacity
Udacity offers a variety of free online courses and students can sign up at any time. Currently all the courses being offered are computer related, and include: Building a Search Engine, Web Application Engineering, Applied Cryptography and Programming a Robotic Car.
Online college courses for credit:
Colleges offer independent study online courses that can be taken any time, any place for credit. They also offer a selection of online cohort courses that follow the semester calendar.
California State University
Miami Dade College
University of Texas
Online pre-college courses, some for credit and some not
Brown University (not for credit)
Students can demonstrate they can do Ivy League level academic work.
Northwestern College (for credit)
This is a college in Minnesota, not Northwestern University.
Oregon State University (for credit)
Through OSU’s Extended Campus, you can choose from over 40 college classes in subjects like Calculus, Art, German, Philosophy, Wildlife Conservation, Women Studies and Atmospheric Sciences.
Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science (not for credit)
Provides students with university-level online courses in mathematics and computer science.
Contact International College Counselors
If you have questions on online courses, credit transfer or college applications and are a client of International College Counselors, please contact our expert college advisors at www.internationalcollegecounselors.com
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