<p>I go to a fairly rigorous private high school in the Midwest. I just started my junior year and I am taking the toughest courseload offered at my school. I am in 3 Dual Enrollment Advanced College Credit classes (US History, Spanish, English Lit). </p>
<p>I am familiar with AP credit courses, but I don't quite understand the difference between AP classes and Dual Enrollment classes. What is the difference? How will taking these classes affect my admission next year into some of the reasonable selective colleges? Do colleges have a preference between AP and Dual Enrollment?</p>
With dual/concurrent enrollment classes, you are literally taking a college class, so the actual grade you get in the class quarter to quarter or semester to semester, is what goes on your college transcript. So if you suck at doing homework or you’re not a good test taker, it’ll be hard for you to keep a good grade. AP classes are personally, for me, an easy A. You just have to do the notes assigned and read the textbook and you have an A. The final exam does not go on your grade, so you could easily get straight A’s all year and get a 1 on the AP cumulative exam and it would not hurt your high school grades at all, you just wouldn’t get any college credit. And vice versa, if you got straight D’s all year and got a 5 on the exam, they would most happily give you college credit. Or, if you’re like me, you get A’s all year and you score 3-4 on the exams and get college credit, without hurting your GPA. In fact, A’s in AP courses are quite easier than A’s in normal high school courses because AP teachers are always really good (they care about you and know exactly what they’re talking about) and the subjects are usually quite interesting and fun to learn about and pay attention to in class. All it does is require a few extra hours a week of studying and homework, and $90 for a cumulative exam in May. Which honestly is so worth it, considering you can get up to 6 credit hours just by taking a class that’s a little bit harder in high school. I have many friends who are in dual enrollment who have stressed about final exams (don’t we all) and have failed and gotten a D or F on their final transcript, and extremely dropped their HS GPA, just because they failed an exam. With AP, if you fail the final exam, it doesn’t affect your high school or college transcripts, it just determines if you get any college credit at all. Hope this helped!
My advice is, only take dual enrollment if you know FOR SURE you are going to graduate with an associates degree, and if getting an associates degree is more important to you than a good HS GPA. If you are not 10000% sure about graduating with an associates (make sure to meet with your school counselor to make sure you’re on track for that, since you’re a junior) and if you have a good GPA and don’t wanna ruin that, then go the AP route and don’t waste your time on dual enrollment. As far as what colleges look for, graduating with your associates looks pretty stellar on a college application. But if you didn’t complete your associates and finished with like 6 dual enrollment classes, colleges just view those as nothing special. When they see you took 6 AP’s, they view those as nationally-recognized classes that are significantly harder, and will accept those for credit at their school. If you end up going to a university or a college out of state, they will very very rarely accept a dual enrollment class for credit. Dual enrollment is really just a crap shoot in general, so I would just go with AP. AP is just more prestigious and secure. If that makes any sense.
I know you’re graduated now, but I’m just posting this for other’s reference if they happen to look at this for advice.
Dual enrollment courses may be more or less advanced than the level of courses that AP courses emulate. I.e. for some types of courses, there is no AP option (possibly because the student has already taken the AP course and wants to take something more advanced).
But you need to be careful. Dual enrollment credits may not transfer if you are going “away” for college. Example, my D had a friend who did who senior year as post secondary In ohio- but is going to school in Boston next year. None of her cc credits transferred- all her ap (from soph/junior year) did. She would have been WAY better off sticking to ap