How to Get Grade 11 Physics Credit After Starting Post-Secondary
The dryer was buzzing, I was folding mismatched socks at 9pm last January, when my 19-year-old daughter Mia leaned against the laundry room door staring at her laptop. She’d finished her first semester of general studies at our local community college, planning to transfer to the university’s nursing program the next fall. She’d checked the prereq list a dozen times, or so she thought. Turned out, buried at the bottom of the fine print, was a requirement she’d completely missed: Grade 11 physics. She’d skipped it in high school to take extra art classes, convinced she’d never need it for anything she wanted to do.
“I already started post-secondary,” she said, voice tight. “Can I even get this credit now? Am I just a year behind before I even started?”
I volunteer one day a week at our local adult learning centre, so I’ve fielded a dozen versions of this question, but I’ll admit I panicked a little too. We sat at the kitchen table with mugs of cold tea and sorted through it, and what I found surprised me. It’s not the huge, expensive setback most people assume it is, as long as you avoid the common traps that trip up most students and parents first.
The first thing we did the next morning was call the admissions office at the university nursing program directly. I can’t stress this enough: don’t rely on general google results or the course descriptions random websites throw at you. Every program has different rules about what credits they accept. Mia had already found a $500 private online “Grade 11 physics” course that showed up first in her search results, and she was ready to put it on her credit card. When we asked admissions, they told me they don’t accept any credits from private unaccredited providers. Only credits issued through the provincial ministry of education, or equivalent post-secondary courses approved ahead of time, count. That one phone call saved us $500 and a whole lot of wasted time.
Once we knew what they’d accept, we looked at the three options that actually work for students already enrolled in post-secondary. The first, and cheapest, is adult upgrading through your local public school board. Most districts offer night or part-time day classes for adult learners working toward missing high school prerequisites. The school 15 minutes from our house has a 4-month night class for Grade 11 physics that meets once a week for three hours. The teacher is a retired high school physics teacher who works specifically with adult learners, so he’s fine with people who haven’t taken a math or science class in years. The cost? $42. And because Mia is upgrading to get into a post-secondary program and meets the low income requirements, the school waived the entire fee through the provincial adult learning grant. Most people don’t know these grants exist, you just have to ask the registration office for the form when you sign up.
If your schedule doesn’t line up with night classes—say you work full time or have a full course load at your current post-secondary—every province has a public, accredited distance learning school that offers self-paced Grade 11 physics. These are run by the government, so their credits are accepted at every post-secondary school in the country, unlike private online courses. They cost around $100, which is still way cheaper than the private options that charge $500 or more, and the same fee waivers apply. Mia considered this route, but she wanted to be able to ask questions in person when she got stuck on kinematics, so she went with the night class.
The third option, if you’re already taking full-time post-secondary courses and don’t want to add a high school level class to your plate, is to check if your target program will accept an introductory post-secondary physics course as an equivalent. Mia’s community college offers a 3-credit 100-level introductory physics class that counts toward her general studies requirements, and the nursing program admissions office confirmed it would satisfy the Grade 11 physics prerequisite. The only catch here is you have to get that approval in writing. Don’t take a chance on a verbal okay over the phone. Save the email from admissions so you have proof if there’s any confusion later. This route worked well for a guy I know at the learning centre who was going into engineering, because he got credit for the class both for his prereq and his current degree.
Mia’s class ended this past June. She studies for an hour after her coffee shop shift three nights a week, and it never derailed her other community college classes. She said most of the people in her room are in the same boat: a construction worker upgrading to get into engineering technology, a mom going back to school for midwifery who also skipped physics in high school. The teacher doesn’t do pop quizzes or make people feel bad for forgetting basic algebra, which was Mia’s biggest fear going in. She got a B+ on her final mark, which is more than enough for the nursing program requirements.
We sent her official transcript off two weeks ago, after paying the extra $5 for rush processing (another small tip: request your transcript at least two weeks before your application deadline, always. Processing takes longer than most schools tell you). We won’t hear back about her acceptance until mid-July, so we’re still waiting. If she doesn’t get in this round, the credit doesn’t expire, so she can reapply next year without doing it all over again.
It’s easy to see a missing prerequisite like Grade 11 physics after you’ve already started post-secondary as a major disaster that will cost thousands and set you back a full year. But more often than not, it’s a small extra step that fits around the classes and work you’re already doing. The biggest mistake people make is going for the first expensive private course that pops up in their search. The most reliable, cheapest options are the public ones that don’t spend a fortune on advertising. So far, that’s what’s worked for us, and it’s what I tell every parent who emails me asking for help with the same problem. We’ll know in a few weeks if it worked out for nursing, but either way, Mia crossed one big thing off her to-do list, and that’s enough for now.
Please indicate: Thinking In Educating » How to Get Grade 11 Physics Credit After Starting Post-Secondary