By Will Geiger

Will Geiger is the co-founder of Scholarships360 and has a decade of experience in college admissions and financial aid. He is a former Senior Assistant Director of Admissions at Kenyon College where he personally reviewed 10,000 admissions applications and essays. Will also managed the Kenyon College merit scholarship program and served on the financial aid appeals committee. He has also worked as an Associate Director of College Counseling at a high school in New Haven, Connecticut. Will earned his master’s in education from the University of Pennsylvania and received his undergraduate degree in history from Wake Forest University.

Updated: May 21st, 2020

What if I told you that you could save 90% on college tuition without a single scholarship?

You’d say I was crazy, right?

Luckily, there is a way that you can save upwards of 90% on your freshman year of college!

How does this work?

Motivated students who have access to a computer and internet can access some of the best educational institutions in the country. Schools like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Oxford, UPenn and many, many others have put their courses online (for free) through platforms like edX and Coursera.

While previously, these courses were simply for personal learning and fulfillment, there are a number of ways to transfer these courses to four-year colleges and universities. Below, I will go through two options for saving a ton of money on tuition. If you are a high school student, you can start earning college credit RIGHT NOW.

Let’s get started:

Global Freshman Academy

One great example of this is Arizona State University’s Global Freshman Academy (GFA). Through GFA, you can start taking your freshman year college classes while in high school. The Global Freshman Academy course offerings include engineering, English, programming, sociology, economics, and several other academic areas. If you were taking these classes at Arizona State, they would cost you roughly $1700 to take. At GFA, a class will cost you $600 each, which is roughly a third of the cost. This means that GFA costs a mere $6,000 vs. $60,000+ at a private college! 

Of course, the limitation to this is that you can only take your first-year courses. Even so, you will be saving an incredible amount of money. Afterwards, you will receive an Arizona State University transcript; you can either continue at ASU (they offer both on-campus and online degrees) or transfer it to another school. This can be a great option for high school juniors/seniors or students taking a gap year. If you have more specific questions about ASU’s GFS, you can check out the handy FAQ on the Arizona State site.

Taking AP Classes

Many, many colleges award students credit for successfully completing Advanced Placement (AP) classes (you can search for the credit policies at various colleges here). Typically, students need to receive a score of 3, 4, or 5 in order to receive credit.

In addition to offering college classes, edX also has numerous AP classes that you can take online for free!

If your high school doesn’t offer AP classes (or just doesn’t offer a particular AP), you can take them through edX. These courses all serve as excellent prep so you can ace your AP exams. The cost for taking an AP class is a mere $94 (as of 2016-2017). This means that you can save a ton of money (if you consider that a college class can cost between $1,500 and $7,000!).

Bottom Line

The Arizona State Global Freshmen Academy and edX offer amazing opportunities for students to get ahead with college credits. Whether you want to directly acquire college credits through GFA or prepare for AP exams, there are multiple ways to save serious dollars!