My youngest is a high school junior and will be submitting her senior year course requests next week. I noticed that in her school’s course catalog, there were several DE courses being offered that she might be interested in as an alternative to AP courses: DE Calculus, English Composition, and Chemistry.
I’d like to get some opinions on the pros and cons of AP vs. DE.
I do know the cost is higher for DE classes, at least at her school.
She’ll most likely go to a public university.
Thanks!
Figure out what college the DE courses are at, and whether it has a transfer credit articulation agreement with the colleges that she is likely to attend in the future.
If she may be pre-med or pre-law, remember that college courses taken while in high school and grades earned in them do count for medical and law school applications. That would be a boost if she earns A or A+ grades, a drag if she earns B+ or lower grades.
Assuming that these are actually taken as college courses (not the college course syllabus taught in high school format), they may give her a taste of how college courses are run so that it will not be as big of an adjustment when she goes to college after graduating from high school.
My kid did a DE course and 2 AP courses. She did well on the AP exams, and got an A in the DE course.
None of these gave her any usable college credit. Her DE course was anatomy and physiology. She has now taken that course three times…her college required it as part of her major…taken there. She then took it again in professional school. Her AP credits were accepted but none applied to her major, and all were in areas where she took courses anyway as part of her studies.
But both did improve her weighted GPA.
I would suggest your daughter take the courses she is interested in taking…and not be too concerned with AP vs DE.
Does she have a small list of the public universities she hopes to attend? If so, I would check with them and see what would transfer. For my daughter we did this and found she could get several credits with her DE/College Credit Plus courses. She then chose courses for her senior year that would transfer against required general ed courses. (We emailed two colleges junior year with a short description of the courses to see what would transfer.) As a current college sophomore she is taking junior level courses and could graduate early if she chooses.
For my son, now a high school senior, he has a few DE courses but more AP courses. He wasn’t as sure of his top schools junior year like my daughter was so for him he chose to go the AP route. He found more of his group went the AP route. In researching his top few college choices now, it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Some allow AP credit without DE, another both AP and DE, while another gives credit but not towards any requirements.
If your daughter is interested in the DE courses, and they will cover college requirements, it may be worth the cost. Good luck to her!
My daughter is not a good test taker so did not get college credits for her AP classes. I think she would have done well in the DE classes (taught at her high school, no cost, with only other high school kids in them). She wishes she would have taken the English classes and a history class as DE so she wouldn’t have had to take them in college.
One con for de for you may be the cost of books on top of the cost of the class. Depending on the book you may find a cheap copy but some of them have a connect or access code that if needed can be over $100. We don’t pay for de classes or rentals but pay towards AP tests.
Not sure about your school but at our high school those are all full year ap classes and 1 semester as de classes. A pro is if you don’t like the class you finish quicker. A con is if you love the class is it doesn’t last as long. A pro for de is you could take 4 de (two a semester) and just 2 AP.
When/where are the de classes offered? How does it fit into the rest of the schedule.
One college my daughter applied to will give credit for AP English or DE English Composition. However if you want to do the honors program they will not count either one. While I’ve only heard of it at the one school it could be something to ask about.
tip for de - save course descriptions and syllabi - some schools may ask to see them
Sorry it took so long to respond. My kid had a basketball game last night, then I spent the rest of the evening doing some research on the DE thing which is more complicated than just taking an AP class.
@ucbalumnus @jcmom716 The courses are taken at the five high schools in our county and the schools do have an transfer credit articulation agreement with the public universities that she is considering in our state. They are administered by the local CC. She will not be pre-med or pre-law. She wants to major in some type of science.
@thumper1 The DE courses listed in the course catalog are courses she would be interested in taking. There are only four DE courses listed: Bio (she’s taking AP Bio now), Chem, Calc, and English. This will be her senior year schedule. At her school, There is no happy medium (no honors courses) at her school between regular and AP/DE classes after sophomore year for most core courses. I think the only exception is honors English 11 (she taking that now) and honors physics (will take next year). If a kid is a halfway decent student and on a college prep track, they’re expected to take AP/DE courses for their cores as Jrs/Srs. She’s in the top 2% of her class of 420. So, she’s going to have to take a few AP’s or DE’s next year - otherwise she’ll be in regular core classes with the students not on a college prep track and won’t be challenged at all, and colleges won’t be impressed. Our state colleges (VA) are pretty competitive. She’s looking at applying to VaTech, JMU, and Christopher Newport. She doesn’t want the pressure cooker environment of the top two VA public’s. And I don’t think she’s concerned about increasing her GPA in her senior year - she’s more interested in being prepared for college at this point.
She’s taken or currently taking APES, Bio, and Stats and made A’s in all. She scored a 4 on the APES exam. All of her other core classes so far have been honors courses except for US History 11.
After I did the research and some sleuthing, I found out that the only DE course that is currently offered at her school is DE English. The catalog lists four DE courses but it’s the catalog for all the county schools. Some courses including a few AP courses are only offered at specific schools. All the DE courses in next years catalog were listed as location TBD. I don’t know if her school will continue to offer DE English or if they switch locations and DE course options between schools from year to year. I’ll have to check on that next week when the school is having an evening course registration help session where you can get help from the GC’s. It probably depends on how many kids are interested at each school and we’ll find out at a later date.
I did look on the VATech (her top choice so far) website and the DE English course does transfer as both English Comp I and II - six credits. I didn’t take the time to look up the other two courses, but I would assume that they would transfer also. VATech seems to have a stricter policy on AP credits as they will only accept either AP Comp or AP Lit, not both.
The cost for the English class is about $250, but as I mentioned, it does transfer as two semesters of English so it’s a pretty good deal.
The main reason she’s thinking of doing DE instead of AP is because of her weaknesses in reading and writing which makes her a iffy on testing. She does well on technical writing where she can regurgitate learned concepts, but has a hard time with the “expository, analytical,and argumentative forms of writing” that are required in most AP classes and exams. I’ve heard that DE courses are sometimes better than AP for kids that aren’t great at testing because the college credit is based on the grades made throughout the year, not just one exam at the end. In any case, she absolutely does not want to take AP English Lit next year, and she’d be twiddling her thumbs in regular English 12, so if her school does offer the DE English class, that might be the best option for her.
Thanks everyone for your help. The only question I still have is what did your kids think about the rigor of DE courses compared to their AP’s? Were they fairly equal? I’m sure it varies by schools and instructors just like AP courses, but I’d still like to have some info on that. In our case, I think the DE English course could be pretty time consuming at least because it’s worth 6 college credits. She can’t take just one semester for 3 credits because the school only counts one semester as .5 credits and she needs a full credit of English to graduate. We’ll be sure to ask the GC about that next week. If it is harder or more time consuming than AP Lit then she’ll have to rethink this.
For my daughter there were DE foreign language courses at the high school and then she took College Credit Plus at a college branch for Math, Science, and other courses. She felt the DE at the high school was easier than the courses at the college branch, but she also really enjoyed the foreign language teacher which kept her interest. She did not take AP Lit. We are similar that there isn’t a choice for Honor’s English senior year. She chose regular English and it was easy for her, probably too easy.
OTOH my son is currently in AP Lit. There are some rather hard books along with poetry which he doesn’t care for AT ALL. Luckily he really likes the teacher. He used this teacher for one of his Letters of Recommendations and she has pushed him to stay the course. He feels he will be well prepared for the AP test. He has also taken/currently taking a variety of AP including Calc BC, Physics, Govt, Econ and more as well as DE foreign language and DE Accounting at the high school.
Bottom line at our school, I believe AP is harder than DE, but a lot depends on the teachers. Do you know who the teacher is for the DE English course? Maybe have her ask around for his/her reputation. If it’s favorable I would think she would be fine. She sounds prepared and will do very well for yourself. And given the fact she would get credit, I would pay it if it were my child.
Introductory general biology in college and AP biology cover substantially the same topics, although the college course may be more or less in depth and rigorous than the high school AP course.
@ucbalumnus I’m sorry - I should have made myself clearer. DE Bio is not one of the four that she’s interested in, because she’s taking AP Bio right now. I was rushing through my post and made several errors.
The point I was attempting to make was in reply to Thumper1, who advised me to let my daughter take the courses she is interested in, and not worry about whether they are DE or AP. I was letting her know that these WERE courses she was interested in taking because she really doesn’t have the choice of not taking two or three AP/DE’s due to the school’s lack of senior level honors classes.
@jcmom716 Thanks for your input. We will definitely ask around about the teacher. She’s pretty good at getting opinions from other students and teachers about classes she’s interested in. And I usually don’t go to the school registration events - she’s also been good so far about choosing good course schedules on her own. But next year just seems a little more complicated, so that’s why I plan to go - to get all the info we can to make a good decision.
They don’t offer DE at our HS, just AP. S17 went to college with 9 credits, middle son had 39, of which SUNY took 30, which was their max as my son had all 4’s and 5’s, so it wasn’t a matter of the score. By contrast, S17’s roommate, from a HS in our same state, has 60 DE credits and came in at junior level. I am a teeny bit jealous because it would have made S17’s life as a BFA student much easier. Although he couldn’t graduate sooner, he would have been able to pursue a double major or just take a bunch of classes he might enjoy.
@LeastComplicated I understand your point.
Re: rigor. My kid found both the DE and AP courses were good. But as I mentioned…her DE course was Anatomy and Physiology. She was required to take it as part of her degree at HER college. She said…the actual course she took at her college was more rigorous. And her professional school one was WAYYYYY more rigorous.
Since it sounds like you don’t have many options for AP or DE…and your kid is interested in all of them…then I’m not sure it matters whether she takes DE or AP. They are both considered challenging in terms of courseload, if that’s what you are looking for.
At our school DE was free…the school district paid for for the tuition. AP courses…our kids were required to take the tests and they were not free.
If finances are a significant issue…pick the one with the least financial impact…or see if your high school has some kind of financial assistance for those who cannot afford the costs. Where I Iive…that is a mandate.
It sounds like you have already contacted the colleges of interest to see how DE or AP courses might benefit your kiddo once they start college.
@thumper1 Thanks. Finances aren’t really an issue - we’d rather pay a little more for a class if she had a better chance of getting college credit for it, with all other things being equal.
Next year she’ll probably be taking AP/DE Chem, AP/DE Calc, Honors Physics, and AP CS Principles. Then of the courses she HAS to take to meet her graduation requirements (she’ll already have five maths and four sciences before next year - for a total of six sciences and maths when she graduates*), she’ll probably be taking the DE English (instead of AP Lit) and regular US Gov’t. She’ll have two more class periods so she can choose a couple of other things that interest her.
So she’ll probably end up taking 7 AP/DE classes total, with the rest being honors, except for her last two years of History. Hopefully that, combined with her 4.0 UW GPA, will get her into a pretty good college. She hasn’t taken the SAT yet, but she thinks she can get above 1200 if her PSAT is any indication.
*Yes, she does have three FL, PE, Art and Personal Finance courses that are required for graduation.
Thanks for your help!
I think both DE and AP are good. My son took plenty of both, although he failed to pass one or two of his AP exams.
Sometimes DE enrollment is taught in a high-school classroom. IMHO this isn’t real dual enrollment, and in fact many universities will not accept these credits. Real dual enrollment, taken on a college campus, is highly beneficial, in that it allows students a chance to see what a real college class is like. As a parent I found it helpful to be able to counsel my son a little on his college classes.
@EarlVanDorn Thanks! My daughter’s DE would be taken on her high school campus, but I’ve done some research, and the public universities in our state will accept the credit. As for any other colleges she might apply to, you could be right. We’ll have to take our chances I guess.
My other daughter took 7 AP’s and although she passed most of them, she didn’t get college credit for any - or they didn’t reduce the number of courses she needs to graduate anyway.
So, we’ll just go with the flow and hope for the best.
D did both DE and AP–sometimes for the same classes, all taught at her high school in conjunction with our local CC. All of our in-state universities must accept our in-state CC credits. Sometimes kids choose DE and don’t take the AP exam. Some kids will pay for both DE credits and AP exams for the same class so they can choose which to use later. Check carefully what your kid’s likely college offers for AP scores or accepts for transfer/DE credits. Kids who go to their in-state public schools can benefit most from DE. D got more than a year’s worth of credits through DE and AP. (Her older sibs, who went out of state and had no DE, only got about a semester out of their AP credits). I’ve heard of some kids who had 2+ years of credits. The biggest benefit for all of my kids was that they were able to “pre-take” those basic English, History, and foreign language requirements.
I just dug into this issue for the purpose of deciding whether D19 should take AP Literature or College English Dual Enrollment (taught at our high school with credit from the CC) for her senior year. What I figured out is that for our in state universities, getting a 4 or 5 on the AP means you only have to take one semester of freshman English composition (an accelerated honors version) versus the usual two semesters of freshman English composition. By contrast, if you take the DE class you get credit for two semesters of freshman English and have satisfied that requirement already. So IF you know you want to go in state and also want to be done with English ASAP, then the DE class makes more sense than the AP class.
But there’s no hard and fast rule or easy answer to AP vs DE because it really requires digging into the requirements of specific schools on specfic AP classes and also knowing whether that school would take your DE credit.
@Corinthian Thank you. Your situation sounds exactly like ours. She’d get two semester’s worth of credit for her DE. Plus, at her top in-state college choice, they only allow students to receive credit for either AP Comp or AP Lit, not both.
I think she wants to be done with English.