North Dakota Homeschool Dual Enrollment: College Credits While Still in High School

North Dakota homeschoolers can take college courses for credit starting in sophomore year — and the state picks up a significant portion of the tuition through the Bank of North Dakota. Most families either don't know this program exists or assume it's only for public school students. It's not. Homeschoolers are explicitly eligible, and the process for enrolling is straightforward once you know what documentation is required.

Who Can Participate

Dual enrollment in North Dakota is available to homeschool students who are currently in their sophomore, junior, or senior year of high school. Freshman-year students are not eligible for the dual credit financial assistance program.

There is no GPA floor required to apply for dual enrollment, though individual colleges may have placement prerequisites for specific courses (particularly Math). If placement testing is required, ACCUPLACER scores are used at most ND community colleges.

How the Tuition Assistance Works

The Bank of North Dakota administers the Dual Credit program. Under this program, eligible students — including homeschoolers — can receive financial assistance covering tuition for up to two college courses per school year.

The assistance is paid directly to the participating college. From the student's perspective, the courses are either free or deeply discounted depending on the institution's fees and credit hour pricing. This makes dual enrollment one of the most cost-effective paths to entering college with credits already banked.

The BND program applies to courses taken at North Dakota public colleges and universities, including NDSU, UND, Bismarck State College, and the state's community and tribal colleges. Private colleges may not qualify.

The Homeschool Enrollment Process

Because homeschool students do not have a school counselor or registrar to coordinate the paperwork, the parent handles the enrollment process directly. Here is how it works in practice:

Step 1: Contact the college's dual enrollment or admissions office. Tell them your student is a homeschooler. Most ND colleges have a designated dual enrollment contact — calling is faster than email for getting the exact current forms.

Step 2: Submit a permission form signed by the parent as the school official. Public school students need their principal's or counselor's sign-off. For homeschoolers, the parent signs as the school official. The permission form confirms that the parent consents to the student taking college coursework and that it will be counted toward high school credits.

Step 3: Submit an up-to-date transcript. The college needs a current transcript showing completed high school coursework, grades, and credits. This does not need to be in any official format — a well-formatted parent-issued transcript is accepted. The transcript helps the college assess whether the student is academically ready for the course.

Step 4: Complete any required placement testing. If the course requires a placement prerequisite (common for Math and English composition), the student will need to take the college's placement test before registering. ACCUPLACER is standard at BSC and most NDCC system schools.

Step 5: Register for the course and apply for BND financial assistance. Once admitted as a dual enrollment student, the student registers for courses like any other college student. The BND tuition assistance application is separate — the college's financial aid or dual credit office will walk you through it.

How Dual Credits Count

Dual enrollment courses generate two records simultaneously: a college transcript entry and a high school transcript entry. For the high school record, the parent determines how to apply the college course to the homeschool transcript.

Common approaches:

• Replace a high school course. A college Calculus course replaces the "Calculus" entry on the high school transcript. The college grade applies. Some parents apply a bonus to the GPA for college-level work (treating it like an AP or honors course at +0.5).
• Add as an additional credit. If the college course does not directly replace a required high school subject, list it as an elective with the course name and credit value.

Credit hour conversion. Most college courses are 3 credit hours. For high school purposes, one college credit hour typically equals one Carnegie unit. A 3-credit-hour college course would count as 3 high school credits — though families often record it as 1.0 high school credit to avoid inflating the transcript. Check how the universities you are targeting interpret dual enrollment credits.

The key: be transparent on the high school transcript about which courses were taken at the college level. Label them clearly (e.g., "BSC ENGL 110 — Composition I, College Course, 3.0 credits"). Admissions offices know how to read dual enrollment entries and view them favorably.

What to Take — and What to Avoid

Not all dual enrollment courses are equally useful. A few principles:

Take general education core courses. English Composition, College Algebra, Statistics, Intro to Psychology, Western Civilization — these transfer cleanly to almost any four-year ND university and satisfy general education requirements. You can enter NDSU or UND sophomore year functionally by the time these credits are counted.

Be careful with highly specialized courses. An intro programming course or a business elective may or may not transfer depending on the program your student enters. If the goal is to bank credits that will definitely count, stick with the general education block.

Match courses to homeschool curriculum gaps. If your student has completed strong math through Algebra II at home but writing is weaker, an English Composition dual enrollment course provides structured instruction and a college-level credential simultaneously.

Don't overload. Two courses per year is the BND-funded cap. Taking more is possible but requires paying the additional tuition. One course per semester at a manageable pace is often the right call for a student also completing homeschool coursework.

Bismarck State College as a Dual Enrollment Option

BSC is worth singling out because it is an open-enrollment institution with a history of working with homeschool families. BSC's lower tuition rates mean BND assistance covers a higher percentage of the cost, and the college's community college structure means courses are typically less demanding than upper-division university courses — appropriate for a 10th- or 11th-grader taking their first college class.

BSC also offers online course sections for most general education requirements, which matters for homeschool families outside the Bismarck area.

Tracking Dual Credits in Your Documentation

When a student finishes high school with a mix of parent-taught homeschool courses and dual enrollment college credits, the transcript needs to reflect both clearly. The college transcript (from BSC, NDSU, UND, etc.) is a separate document that the student will eventually submit to four-year universities at transfer or freshman entry. It is not embedded in the homeschool transcript — it is attached alongside it.

What the homeschool transcript should show:

• The dual enrollment course listed by its official college course number and name
• The college where it was taken
• The credit value you are applying to the high school record
• The grade earned

Keep a copy of the official college transcript from each institution. When your student applies to a four-year university, they will need to submit both the homeschool transcript (for the high school record) and official transcripts from any colleges attended.

If you are building a documentation system that tracks both the homeschool record and dual enrollment credits together — including credit hour logs, cumulative GPA, and a transcript format that ND colleges accept — the North Dakota Portfolio & Assessment Templates include the tools to manage all of it in one place.

The Short Version

North Dakota homeschool students in grades 10-12 can take college courses for dual credit. The Bank of North Dakota covers tuition for up to two courses per year at ND public colleges. The parent handles enrollment paperwork directly, signing as the school official. Courses appear on both a college transcript and the homeschool transcript. Keep both sets of records — four-year universities will ask for them.

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