Hey guys,
I was wondering; do colleges prefer dual enrollment or advanced placement? For example, would it sound better to have taken calculus at Columbia university or taking ap Calc? I’ve heard that ap courses can be tougher than college courses, which is why I’m kind of confused.
Depends on which college you eventually go to. Colleges may be more or less generous with transfer credit for college courses taken while in high school compared to AP scores. Each college may differ, so check each college of interest.
Note that college courses taken while in high school and their grades will be included in your application to professional schools like law or medical.
Each college takes your transcript and recalculates your GPA based on their method. This allows them to better compare GPAs for admissions.
So you should check websites of your top college choices (or contact their admissions department) and ask how they assign extra value to Honors, AP, and Dual Enrollment courses.
My D had mostly Honors courses, and then 22 hours of Dual Enrollment senior year. The school she attended did NOT use her Dual Enrollment grades at all in calculating GPA, but gave her an extra .5 for each Honors course.
Our family likes Dual Enrollment as a way to get a taste of real college life on a college campus while still living at home. AP courses are taught on high school campus by high school teachers.
Plus, you can work hard all year in an AP class but have a bad test day and end up not getting college credit for your AP class. And all those AP tests fall during your regular final exams.
Even if your DE class is not rigorous (“easy” cc) in terms of content it’ll be twice faster paced and will require a lot more autonomy than an AP class.
If on top of it, if you take it at a selective 4-year college, obviously the class will have an even faster pace and depth of focus, so that it’d be very valuable in determining how well you can handle college rigor.
The best predictor of success in college, is… Surprise…success in a college course. 
So, if you have the chance of taking a first year class at Columbia v. an AP class, make sure you can handle it before you decide but the class at Columbia would definitely be a more challenging choice.
@MYOS1634 great point that I failed to take into consideration. Our DE experience was with a smaller, newer public university close to our home.
There were no “weed out” classes, and the level of professor interaction and school wide emphasis on student success made for a positive learning environment for our D.
OP needs to figure out if DE would be a positive experience with the colleges close to their home.
If you have the opportunity to take AP Calc, I would take AP Calc. It will be easier to fit into your schedule, is a known quantity by colleges, is on the same academic calendar as your HS, does not count in your college GPA.
If you don’t have the opportunity for an AP class, then take the DE.
But don’t take DE classes just because they are DE…I saw a potential nursing student taking DE Psych and DE Socialogy but not take AP Science senior year because she thought DE was “better for college”…no, preparing yourself for your major and those you compete against for that major is “better”.