<p>Which do top schools consider better?
Taking a college course at a local community college and receiving an A, or taking an AP class and subsequent exam and scoring a 5?
Which would demonstrate greater mastery and best enhance an application?
Thanks.</p>
<p>It depends completely on the class, the high school, and the community college.</p>
<p>In my experience, a 5 AP score from a HS class would generally be much stronger than an A from a community college, but there are people here who hold a completely opposite opinion. It’s just that I’ve never lived in an area where community colleges were anything other than remedial high school, despite moving a number of times. Indeed, this site is the first place where I’ve ever heard that opinion, and I’m still quite skeptical.</p>
<p>Many states’ state universities accept a lot of junior transfers from community colleges. Of course, these transfer students need to take transferable courses and do well in them, but the courses are accepted by the state universities as fulfilling prerequisites to the students’ majors (including sequential subjects like math and physics).</p>
<p>State universities often have pre-made articulation lists specifying which community college courses are equivalent to which state university courses; in many cases, the acceptance of community college courses is better than for AP courses (see [Welcome</a> to ASSIST](<a href=“http://www.assist.org%5DWelcome”>http://www.assist.org) for California, for example). Private universities are less likely to have such lists, so they may have to individually evaluate courses, in contrast to likely having already pre-evaluated AP credit.</p>
<p>Think about it this way: If you take a chemistry class at a college, you have to take 2 final exams. If you take it at the AP level, you have to learn everything over the course of a year and show it on one test. I think colleges understand that that is harder to do and thus requires more review in most cases.</p>
<p>That being said, I certainly don’t think that is the only defining factor in judging one over another.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, I believe that as long as you go to a decent high school, AP success is better than community college success.</p>
<p>Seems like there isn’t an obvious answer that stands out, but rather it depends on the college. I generally think of AP exams and classes as more difficult and time consuming than community college courses, but community college classes are in fact COLLEGE classes, which should just as easily demonstrate readiness for college. </p>
<p>I took an AP English course at my high school and received a 4 on the exam at the end of the year. This year, I took ENG-102 at a local community college for dual enrollment. When comparing the two, I feel like 102 required more work; but this could be because I got a 4 on the AP exam rather than a 5, therefore showing I didn’t spend as much time preparing as I should have.</p>