How early to start working on college credits?

[dfrecore]

Actually there is at least one exception to getting ACE accepted by a school that doesn't accept ACE. In the state of Texas, if you obtain an associate's degree from a public funded community college and transfer to a state funded baccalaureate institution, your core courses will transfer. Your core including any from ACE will by law transfer to the state university even if the state university doesn't accept ACE credits. It's not because of the associate's degree per se. Anyone who graduates from a Texas community college with an A.A. or A.S. is by definition core complete. By law, once core complete, always core complete in a transfer situation. You can be core complete without having an A.A. or A.S.

There may be similar rules in other states.

That's a good deal. CA does not have that rule. If you want to transfer in-state from a CC to a 4-yr public college, you have to use that college's rules to get your AA/AS, or Gen Ed's out of the way. So, if you want to transfer to a CSU, you have to use the CSU-transfer guidelines to get your credits accepted. You have to look at what each CSU accepts in the way of CLEP and/or DSST. If you want to transfer to a UC, then they have separate guidelines, and no CLEP or DSST will be accepted at all. Each school also has a specific database for the different colleges, so you have to plug in the classes you're taking to see if they transfer from one school to another, and how they will be accepted.

It's not as lenient as the TX rules, but at least they have the database so you can make sure that your credits will transfer, and they're very clear on what will be accepted and how ahead of time, so there's no wasted classes.

The one advantage of going to a CC and transferring to a 4-yr CSU or UC - they have guaranteed acceptance, if you meet their requirements (for GPA, number of credits, etc.). That's a definite benefit for CC grads, with the terrible acceptance percentages for in-state freshman we have.