<p>In terms of how difficult they are, this is a completely irrelevant discussion. Each course will vary from state to state, college to college, and teacher to teacher. So any claim that either one is better than the other is simply a personal opinion, nothing more. </p>
<p>However, I think that as a homeschooler specifically, CC courses are more beneficial. The reason I say this is that college admission’s officers see plenty of smart homeschool students who have scored well on the SAT/ACT and on AP Tests. But when a homeschool student has shown success in a variety of college courses, it shows an ability to adapt to different subjects, teachers, and social situations in a class setting that is at a (generally) higher level than high school. So I think that a diverse course load of CC courses can help chip away at the idea that homeschoolers are incapable of dealing with real people in an academic situation, instead of just being able to nail the SAT. And of course, if you can take both AP and CC courses, then that’s even better. I took 63 credits of CC courses in high school, and I got accepted into 6/7 colleges I applied to, with a couple honor’s invitations and merit aid from all 6. </p>
<p>Overall, your best bet is to have a healthy combination of CC or AP courses, good EC’s, and of course, good test scores.</p>
<p>AT9, would you mind listing the schools you were accepted to? It is really helpful to see homeschooled kids, the minority on CC, replying in such depth. Thanks</p>
<p>Re: Are Subject Tests easier than APs?
I don’t know the answer to this. They sure are if you are talking about length and cost.
The question boils down to the pool of test takers. I haven’t seen a report on the SAT scores of AP testers vs. Subject Test testers, which would be interesting.
Generally Subject Tests are required by a fairly small set of elite schools, and University of California applicants. APs are offered by the majority of high schools in the country.
If I had to guess, I’d say that the pool for the Subject Tests is stronger than for the AP tests, and the score percentiles should be viewed in that context. But I honestly don’t know.</p>
<p>That is what I am doing since I go to an alternative school, they don’t offer AP Biology but they offer other AP classes so they recommended I take the equivalent of AP Biology at my local community college which is Biology 3 and study for the AP Exam and SAT Subject Test in Bio to supplement that and show colleges that my course is valid and its also CSU/UC transferable.</p>
<p>danas how did your daughter get into Princeton if she didn’t take college courses at all and how did Princeton know she was academically qualified and are you an alumni at Princeton or what made her stand out.</p>