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Tuesday, March 29, 2022

Dual enrollment, transfer help Maddie Homich get ahead on college

Maddie Homich got a jump start on college while she was in high school.

During her senior year at Greenville High School, Homich decided to take advantage of Montcalm Community College’s dual enrollment program, which allows students to take college-level courses while still in high school and receive both high school and college credit.

During fall 2020 and spring 2021 semesters, she completed coursework in freshman English, speech, bioethics, psychology and medical terminology, earning a total of 18 credits by the time she graduated from high school in spring 2021.

In retrospect, Homich wishes she would have started taking classes her junior year so she could have had a full year of college credits complete and ready for transfer before graduating.

Through dual enrollment, students can take up to 10 college classes, and their high school helps pay tuition and fees up to an approved dollar amount.

“I was glad to start at MCC,” Homich said. “It was comfortable for me to be in a smaller setting and it saved my family a lot of money.”

Today, Homich attends Saginaw Valley State University and is a semester ahead because of the credits she transferred from MCC. She is currently in the pre-nursing program and is on track to apply to the nursing program in fall 2022. She hopes to complete her Bachelor of Science in Nursing and then get a job to gain some nursing experience. She then plans to continue her education to become a nurse practitioner.

It is Homich’s dream to specialize in pediatric oncology and work at Helen Devos Children’s Hospital. As a toddler, Homich was diagnosed with leukemia and spent much of her childhood with the kind of nurses she hopes to become one day.

Without MCC, Homich feels that her transition to SVSU would have been a shock.

“MCC really sets students up for success with their small class sizes and personable and helpful instructors,” Homich said.

She also said she valued that the college uses much of the same technology that larger universities use.

“I cannot encourage high school students enough to start taking college classes at MCC while in high school,” Homich said. “It makes you feel so much more prepared and excited to take on life at a university!”