What Are A-G and CC Courses? A High School Counselor Breaks Down What Parents Actually Need to Know
I’m wiping coffee off my desk when Marisol pulls me aside in the high school parking lot last Wednesday, right after the final bell. Her 11th grader Javi leans against their dusty SUV, thumb tapping TikTok, while she holds out a crumpled course registration form, a ring stain blurring the printed acronyms in the margin. “I’ve read the district’s guide three times,” she says, shifting her soccer duffel from one foot to the other. “I still don’t get A-G and CC. If Javi picks the wrong classes, can he still get into the CSU he wants?”
I have 15 minutes before I have to lock up for the day, so we head back to my small office, and I grab her a clean napkin for the coffee she spilled on her sleeve on the way in. She says all the other parents at her book club are talking about stacking CC classes to get ahead for college, but no one can explain what that actually means, or how it ties to A-G. Everyone just throws around the letters like it’s common knowledge.
I start with A-G first, because that’s where most confusion starts. It’s not a secret honors track only for straight-A students, I tell her. It’s just the set of 15 core classes that all University of California and California State University schools require for freshman admission. It’s the minimum bar to even have your application reviewed, not a bonus to make you look extra good. There are seven categories, labeled A through G: A is history/social science, B is English, C is math, D is lab science, E is foreign language, F is visual or performing arts, G is an extra college prep elective. That’s all the name means.
Most standard college prep classes at our high school are already A-G approved, so you don’t have to hunt them down or memorize the list. The first thing any parent can do right now is pull up their kid’s transcript on the district portal. Every A-G class is already marked with a little checkmark next to it. Just count the checked boxes – if you have 15 by the end of senior year, you’ve met the baseline requirement. That’s it. No hidden hoops, most of the time.
Then CC, I say. That’s just shorthand for concurrent enrollment courses: classes your kid takes at the local community college while they’re still enrolled in high school. The confusion comes because most pre-approved CC classes count toward A-G requirements, so people mix up the two terms. That’s why parents end up with a page full of letters that don’t mean anything.
Javi cuts in here, shifting in the plastic chair by my desk. He wants to drop PE from his schedule next year because varsity soccer takes two afternoons a week for away games, and he’s already struggling to fit all his required classes. His friend said taking a CC kinesiology class would let him skip high school PE and still get the credit he needs, but his coach said he can’t do that without messing up his college apps.
I pull up the official UC A-G course list on my computer, search for our local community college, and pull up the kinesiology 101 class Javi mentioned. Yep, it’s approved for the G elective A-G requirement, and our district allows it to count toward the high school PE graduation requirement. So that works for him, no problem.
I walk them through the three small things I tell every parent considering a CC class, that they don’t put in the district guide. First, always double check that the CC class you want is on the A-G approved list. It takes two minutes to search the public database, and it saves you from spending a whole semester on a class that won’t count for what you need. Second, almost all public school districts let high school students take up to two CC classes a semester for free – you don’t have to pay full community college tuition. Just ask your counseling office for the concurrent enrollment fee waiver, fill it out once per semester, that’s all you have to do. Third, the grade you get in the CC class gets added to your high school GPA just like any other class. So don’t stack three CC classes on top of four AP classes and a part-time job just to “look impressive” for colleges. A lower GPA from overloading hurts your application way more than an extra college class helps it.
I also tell them the thing most parents don’t learn until it’s too late: if your kid is missing an A-G credit at the end of junior year, you don’t have to delay graduation. You can make it up with an approved CC class over the summer or during senior year, that’s exactly what those classes are for. Last year, a senior of mine missed one A-G foreign language credit because she switched schools mid-junior year and her old credit didn’t transfer. She took a 6-week Spanish class at the local CC, got her credit, graduated on time, and got into CSU Northridge.
Marisol asks what if Javi changes his mind and decides to go to community college first anyway, does he still need A-G? I tell her even if he transfers to a four-year after two years at community college, he still needs A-G credits to be eligible. Getting them done in high school is free, so it’s better to check the boxes now than pay for them later. It doesn’t commit him to anything, it just keeps his options open.
We wrap up, I add the CC kinesiology class to Javi’s registration, Marisol jots the link to the A-G course list on her napkin, and they hurry out so Javi makes it to practice on time. I lock my file cabinet, and glance at my email – three new messages from other parents asking the exact same question about A-G and CC.
School districts love acronyms, but no one hands new parents a cheat sheet. I still have a printed copy taped to the front of my office door, with definitions written out in plain language. It gets peeled off every few months from people taking photos of it. Most of the time, the confusion isn’t because parents are doing something wrong, it’s because we insist on calling two pretty straightforward things by a bunch of letters no one bothers to explain.
Right now, Javi’s schedule is set, and that’s one less thing for Marisol to worry about this semester. I’ll answer the three new emails tomorrow morning, step by step. There’s no big trick to it, you just have to check one class at a time, and ask if you don’t know.
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