Hello all, and thank you for stopping and maybe considering helping me with my question. Well, right now I am taking two college classes and then the rest of my classes are honors. I am also taking Spanish 3, in 4-H, have my own blog, am a certified scuba diver, top scorer on my soccer team, and kids life group teacher. My main question is, what looks better? doing AP and IB or taking a bunch of college classes and then the rest being honors?
Depends on which AP courses and which college courses.
High school AP courses typically try to approximate introductory frosh level college course material, although they often cover it at a slower pace than college courses (e.g. a year long AP calculus AB, psychology, or statistics course covers what a college course may cover in a semester). Actual college courses can vary all over the range. For example, in math, you can take remedial courses (high school level math like algebra and trigonometry), frosh level courses (calculus 1, calculus 2), and more advanced courses (calculus 3, linear algebra, differential equations, etc.).
Right now I am just taking comp 1 and american history do those look bad? @ucbalumnus
If those are frosh level courses, they should theoretically be at similar level as AP English and US history courses, but different colleges may teach them at more or less rigorous levels.
Will your college applications explain why you preferred to take the college courses over AP (HS didn’t offer AP so you took the initiative to take college courses, your schedule is more flexible so you can concentrate on your EC passions)? My personal favorite reason, you are tired of the prevalence of teaching to a test (AP) and the College Board determining who is a worthy admit and who is not. You decided to take an actual college course, not one that tries to “approximate” it.
Good luck & aloha!
College classes are usually (but not necessary) at a higher pace than AP classes. For AP classes, you need a good AP exam score for credits. While for college classes, you get the credit from final exam. Nevertheless, not all college credits from all colleges would be accepted for transfer by all schools.