<p>If someone had the chance to take either a AP class or a class at their local community college, which would be better. I'm getting mixed reviews from GC's, parents, and teachers.</p>
<p>AP classes are harder in my op.</p>
<p>My dual-enrollment class is a joke.</p>
<p>CC classes a lot of times are jokes.</p>
<p>But it depends where you live. If you’re in California, you probably have a really good CC, since their system is actually good… but SC CCs suck.</p>
<p>On a side note… My dual-enrollment class is from a very well-respected school where I live. Not even a CC and I think it’s a joke.</p>
<p>I prefer dual enrollment. Both are good, and which is better will depend on particulars unique to the schools.</p>
<p>College classes. Much harder, but it does depend on the college. Just like the AP depends on the teacher.</p>
<p>College classes for sure. I’m currently in dual enrollment. I did six credit hours of math last year, and am doing 24 credit hours this year . I’ll have 31 hours of college credit. Far more than most AP kids. To get 31 hours of college credit, you would need to get a 4/5 on 10 AP exams.</p>
<p>My Psychology class is rediculously hard. Way harder than any AP Psych curriculum I’ve looked at. And this is only the first semester of it! My 200 level psych class is going to be even harder. This brings me to my first point. AP classes are intro classes, but a full year long! Intro classes in college are one semester (obviosuly depending on the subject). So while the AP psych kids waste their time going over intro material for an entire year, I’ll be in a 200 level class my second semester. </p>
<p>Community colleges are going to range as far as difficulty and experiences. I’m taking 200 level economics and 200 level political science this semester. I’m taking 100 level psych and 100 level english also this semester. Next semester I’ll be taking all 200 level classes except for english (two semester sequence). The only easy class I have is english, and that’s because I can write essays pretty well. Some kids who have taken classes as the same CC as me will say it’s really hard or really easy. This is usually bc kids will only take one class. If they’re taking an english 101 class, then of course it’s going to be easy…it’s required for all of the degree seaking students! If they’re taking calc based physics it’s going to be hard! The only true gauge of difficulty are those who choose to take all of their classes in dual enrollment, and have a wide range of classes to measure the difficulty level.</p>
<p>I have amazing teachers at my CC. My econ teacher ran an investment firm with 135 brokers under him and has graduate degrees in business and economics (work experience and advanced education in topic specific subjects will be rare in your average AP teacher). My psych teacher has 35 years of clinical psychology experience, a PhD, and immense ammounts of research experience (again you won’t find any of this at HS level). My english teacher is out this weekend on a book signing tour. He was also a playwright on Broadway.</p>
<p>I absolutely hate it when your typical 5 course AP kid is like “dual enrollment is X Y and Z.” Particularly when they never have taken a college class in their life. All I know is that when I graduate high school I’m going to have more credit than our valedictorian…and more than anyone else in my senior year class. I’m actually applying as a transfer to one school bc I have an entire freshman year’s worth of credit.</p>
<p>Well, more credit is generally open to dual enrollment students (I have 48 credit hours completed, and will have more than 60 at the end of this semester), but it’s not always accepted. State universities will take up to 60 credits in my state, but then schools like Harvard will take up to a year of AP or IB, but not dual enrollment. So it’s not cut-and-dry.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>Yes it depends on the school. My state takes up to two years worth of credit.</p>
<p>I’m surprised you’re applying to a school as a transfer applicant. All of the ones I’m applying to say that I need to apply as a freshman, then they’ll give me advanced standing after I’m admitted (if they accept the credits).</p>
<p>My daughter took Ap classes and it really helped her in the process. She is a Frosh in college and has told her brother to do the same. He is a Sr. in HS and really didn’t want to risk his GPA…</p>
<p>Hope it helps</p>
<p>SM6</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>A lot of the massive state schools will do that. How the hell do you have 48 hours? Did you go full load junior year and then take classes during the summer?</p>
<p>Summer before junior year: 3 classes (9 credits)
Junior year, fall: 5 classes (15 credits) + Latin 5 at high school
Junior year, spring: 5 classes (15 credits), no high school classes
Summer before senior year: 3 classes (9 credits)
This semester: 4 classes + lab (13 credits) + Debate (teach as president) + TA for APWH
Next semester: 4-5 classes, probably a lab (12-16 credits), no high school classes</p>
<p>I’ll have enough for the AA this semester, but I’m drawing it out to take more classes next semester.</p>
<p>Yeah that’s a smart fkin way of doing it. I was an idiot by only doing 6 hours last year. Should’ve gone full time at the CC instead. Oh well.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, the colleges/universities I prefer won’t take two years of credit. Though I suppose the idea behind that is that it takes more than two years to get the proper experience. Oh well, even if I were to get no credit, it was the right choice for me. The teaching quality is superb, classes meet for less time, there’s no homework, there’s more learning, subject matter is more serious, and classes like Philosophy, Sociology, and Astronomy aren’t offered at my high school. ratemyprofessors.com has been so helpful.</p>
<p>If I had gone to Penn State, I’d have some 49 credits all from APs and a few more from dual-enrollment. Just showing that you don’t really need actual college courses (which can get very expensive compared to the $60-some of the AP exam) to get the credit.</p>
<p>I personally think that generally, under assumed circumstances, AP courses are better. My reasoning is that AP courses accept only students of a certain caliber (presumably, they are above average in that they are high school students taking college-level classes), and that these students are - given their presumed drive/ability - more likely to more easily comprehend the material than students on the regular track; that is, compared side-by-side, the AP student has a slight personal advantage over the college student based on the fact that he or she is advanced and thus perhaps feels more compelled to do well than the average college student. From here, I just assume that good students make good classes.</p>
<p>It’s a pretty shaky argument and assumes homogeneous, typified groups, but it does a pretty good job of describing the situation for certain classes in which “natural” talent may play a role. For example, I make the assumption that advanced students taking math at levels above their grade will do better in that class than standard students taking that same math course later on.</p>
<p>Of course, college courses have their advantages. For instance, they’re over a lot quicker and thus will give you the chance to take higher-level courses should you decide to do so.</p>
<p>If you do go into dual-enrollment, make sure you’re doing it at a state school if you’re thinking of going OOS for college. I think only in-state schools will generally guarantee acceptance of CC courses whereas credit from a state college should transfer well over to OOS schools. APs are standardized, so you can at least rest assured knowing most universities will have a system for handling them.</p>
<p>Well if anyone is wondering I was referring to Washingtons running start program, so I wouldn’t have to pay anything, and my school doesnt offer much in the way of aps (bio,chem,LA ones) </p>
<p>And im not even worried about transferring credits, im more interested in the experience, and if I could put on my app that i already have experience in a college setting i think it would help</p>
<p>Im already going for sure in math because im done with AP calc AB and that’s all the school offers.</p>
<p>Just in a general sense what i can tell from this thread is: </p>
<p>college english, science, electives > high school</p>
<p>I want to take a Physics course at a college, but I’m trying to find it at a school near me that’s not a CC. The only one near me is George Mason University(I’ll have my license and car, 30 minute Drive there) So it shouldn’t be too bad.</p>
<p>I think it really depends on the quality of your school and the cc that you’d go to.</p>
<p>My local CC sucks. My high school is awesome. Therefore, my AP Classes are amazing and the CC classes suck. It could very well be reversed where you are and sounds like it might since your school doesn’t offer many APs. (I’d think that they’d have a way for you to study BC Cal or Physics B or C. =/)</p>
<p>But right now… I’m taking 4 APs and a college course and the college course is by far my easiest class.</p>
<p>And for having qualified teachers… We have highly qualified teachers. I go to a private school and a lot of our teachers didn’t start out as teachers, they just chose to teach later. But since we don’t have a required certification program, we get some really cool people to work at the school. =) [I have had several teachers with PhD’s… as early as 7th grade if I remember correctly. It was my science teacher. =)]</p>
<p>I had enough credits to graduate early after my junior year, so I took college courses instead (4 a semester) at 3 local colleges. One was a state school, one was a decent liberal arts college, and one was one of the best liberal arts colleges in the country.</p>
<p>I took AP Calc BC, AP Euro, AP Physics, and AP Language and Composition.</p>
<p>Difficulty wise, its tough to say. Chances are if you take it at a CC, or even a normal (not extraordinary) state school (like me), the classes will be easy compared to taking the AP. On the other side of the spectrum, top notch schools offer tough classes. I took a 400 level course at the top liberal arts college, and it was so much tougher, less straight foreword, and required so much more of my time than any of the APs I took. APs are generally always the same difficulty, since its based off of a standardized test. In both APs and College courses, a lot depends on the teacher.</p>
<p>I believe that college classes at a non CC are viewed as better than just an AP course. This depends on the school of course.</p>
<p>I will add that my views may be a bit biased. I did much worse in my AP classes (3 on physics and english, 2 on calc) than the college classes. I struggled in my junior year for other reasons, and it hurt my academics. Also, I was much less interested in my APs than my college courses. Conversely, I enjoyed the colleges I went to very much.</p>
<p>College classes are very different from AP classes due to the different frequency of meetings, the different frequency of homework, and the nature of grading. I found that college classes turn out to be really interesting.</p>
<p>Also, how does this credit hours thing work at CCs? How many hours of instruction is equivalent to a credit hour? Can you use them (the college credit hours) to help you fulfill graduation requirements for high school? My high school gives 3 credits per semester for any classes we take at a nearby private university (and 5 credits translates to 120 hours of high school class time).</p>
<p>Community college classes (in the SF Bay Area) tend to be a joke. They are nothing compared to certain AP classes, for example Calculus AB or BC. Hell, I took a Calculus A class at one of my nearby CC’s and it ended up being massively easier than, say, Precalculus Honors. </p>
<p>I guess it depends on where you are and if you have any reputable CC’s around you, but I’d say definitely take AP classes.</p>