Graduation Requirements

Graduation requirements in North Carolina have been evolving quite a bit over the last few years, so it can be tricky to keep track of what you need to graduate. Because there is some slight variations in social studies for some of our current cohorts of students, click on the appropriate "Class" to view your specific graduation requirements.

In order to graduate, a student must earn 28 credits.

Each class that a student takes is equal to 1 credit.

Here are some of the common FAQs we receive about credits:

How many credits will I receive for an honors or AP class?

It doesn't matter whether the course is academic, honors or AP, you still earn one credit for the course. The various rigor levels are weighted differently towards your GPA, but ultimately they each are still 1 credit. Some confusion lies with our AP classes since most of them are yearlong. However, those yearlong AP courses are still broken down into two separate classes that students take in the Fall and Spring semester. Therefore, some students believe they earn 2 credits for an AP but really they are earning 1 credit for the "Advanced" portion and 1 credit for the "AP" portion.

How many credits do I need to promote to the next grade level?

Grade promotions rely 100% on how many credits you have. It is as simple as that.

In order to promote from the 9th to the 10th grade, you need to have earned 6 credits (meaning you've passed 6 classes).

To promote from the 10th to the 11th grade, you need to have earned 12 credits.

To promote from the 11th to the 12th grade, you need to have earned 20 credits.

If you do not have the required amount of credits by the end of your school year, you would not be promoted to the next grade level and would repeat your current grade again.

How do drop blocks work with credits?

Senior year, students have the opportunity to have a "drop block" meaning that they do not have to report to a class or two. This is particularly exciting because it means you can either sleep in and come to school later in the day or you can leave earlier in the day - or both. As long as you have passed all of your classes leading up to senior year, you should have at least 24 credits so you would have plenty of room to add some drop blocks if you would like.

A few things to keep in mind about drop blocks however:

To be eligible for sports, a student must pass 3 out of 4 classes the semester prior to their sport. Therefore, if you play baseball in the Spring and only take 2 classes in the Fall of your senior year, you are no longer eligible to play your sport.

Some of the more competitive universities also prefer to see that you're continuing to take a rigorous course load your senior year. If you have too many drop blocks, this can be a red flag to some of those schools so this is another thing to keep in mind. Make sure you have a discussion with your school counselor so that we can discuss your particular situation and what would be the best move to make.

What if I'm transferring to LNHS from a different school where I couldn't earn as many credits?

For transfer students, don't worry! We understand that not all students have had the opportunity to earn 28 credits. If you're coming to us from a school where maybe you only earned 6 or 7 credits for the entire school year, we have a calculation that we conduct to account for the amount of credits you had the potential to earn. You will not be penalized and we will adjust the amount of credits you still need based on your previous school's transcript. However, all students in the state of North Carolina need a minimum of 22 credits to graduate so no matter what each student must earn this minimum amount.

What if I earned high school credit in middle school?

We have a handful of students who come to high school having already completed some high school level courses, such as Spanish 1 or Math 1. As long as the middle school awarded you high school credit for the course, we will honor that and it will count towards your 28 credits needed to graduate. Courses taken in middle school are NOT factored into your GPA, but they do count towards your credit count.

Below are two different graduation planning sheets that may be useful to you as you map out the four years of high school. It's a good idea to start planning sooner rather than later to ensure you will have any necessary prerequisites.