Do AP credits count as part of your degree plan hours for the tuition rebate?

My girls are freshmen and they were told by their counselor to go ahead and claim all their AP credits so they will move up in classification to be able to register earlier. Two of their AP credits would not count towards their degree unless they have room to use them as non-major specific electives (which I think they will have room but not sure). So my question is, do these AP credits count as part of the hours needed for the tuition rebate? Should they hold off on the two AP credits that may have to be used as electives so they do not go over the three hours for the rebate? I’ve heard the AP credits and CLEP credits do not count towards the rebate, so in that case would it not hurt to just go ahead and claim credit for all? If they did that, one would have 24 hours of credit and the other would have 21 hours of credit, plus the one with 24 will be trying to CLEP out of the second American History class and both are going to try to test out of the first ASL class.

But we need to be careful about not letting the credit fall so that they would have less than 12 hours their last semester, correct?